So says , with a measure of defiance. She’s someone who understands that endurance, not provocation, is her greatest transgression. She is now 67: For more than four decades, she’s offended religious leaders, unsettled moral guardians and insulted polite society. Yet none of those affronts has proved as subversive as her refusal to exit quietly. In a culture organized around novelty and replacement, she’s managed to weaponize longevity.

Madonna’s career might be seen as a sequence of calculated shocks: The wedding dress writhing of “,” the supposedly sacrilegious imagery of “,” the BDSM themes of . A notable biography of her is subtitled . But her subversive moments, however incendiary at the time, were ephemeral. If anything, her most renegade accomplishments often went relatively unnoticed. Like earning $50 million (£26.7 million), a record for a female singer in 2004. Or selling more than 400 million records, including albums, singles and digital. Grossing more than $1.3 billion from her tours, another record. In 1992, she signed a then-unprecedented $60 million with Time Warner.

But what really distinguishes Madonna is not the intensity of any single provocation or her prodigious earnings but the cumulative force of her continued presence. She’s outlived her critics, her imitators and many of her contemporaries. The real scandal is not what she did but that she survived so long.

Her endurance matters not simply because it is unusual but because it allowed her cultural experiment to take place. Over decades, Madonna tested the limits of exposure, turning private life into public performance until the distinction between the two appeared to dissolve. What started as provocation became a template for modern celebrity.

The zeitgeist

In February, she sat in the front row at Dolce & Gabbana’s Milan Fashion Week , her arms wrapped around her knees, heavily tinted glasses shading eyes that have seen nearly every iteration of fame in the modern era. Leather gloves accessorized her black outfit, a theatrical flourish that harked back to her Erotica of 1992–93 (gloves, corsets and leather were part of the visual vocabulary she borrowed from fetish subcultures and, in that tour, repurposed for public consumption.) Across the mirrored runway, models twirled in lace and pinstripes, reflecting Madonna’s many incarnations of the past. 

To call Madonna a diva is almost tautological. She is the very definition of a temperamental, world-renowned singer, famed for her volatile temperament and for being notoriously difficult to please. Formidable, demanding, exacting, she’s a force as likely to exhaust collaborators as she is to enchant audiences.

Her epigones and successors — Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Ariana Grande, included — entertain, enchant, influence and inspire, yet all seem anodyne next to Madonna. None has matched her performative ferocity, her willingness to court scandal and alchemize controversy into precious metal. Forty years in, Madonna remains unrepentant, uncontainable, unyielding, the center of attention. She may no longer shape the zeitgeist on her terms, but she remains part of it.

In the 1980s, the world was barely aware of cellphones, the internet was inconceivable and social media was something English novelist H.G. Wells might have dreamt up. Madonna arrived in this landscape as a wannabe dancer who soon learned how to take the cultural pulse. She figured out that the press (as it then was) could either proclaim or annihilate her, that audiences rewarded artists who aroused as well as just entertained them, and who provided spectacle as well as song and dance. She decided to combine them all. In doing so, she did more than respond to a shifting world; she helped catalyze a further shift, scandalizing at every opportunity and dissolving the binary between private and public.

The experiment

Madonna Louise Ciccone moved to New York in 1978, a 20-year-old with nothing but ambition and a few borrowed instruments. She danced, drummed and sang with local bands before releasing her debut single “” in 1982 and her first album, , in 1983. By 1984, her second album, , produced by Nile Rodgers, cemented her international status. The video for the title track and her at the MTV Video Music Awards in a wedding dress simulating masturbation was a foretaste of what was to come.

In 1985, few could imagine a woman deliberately inducing scandal and usually achieving the results she desired. Madonna’s real innovation lay in recognizing something earlier entertainers had missed: Scandal had changed its meaning. No longer necessarily career-ending — as it had been in the cases of Roscoe Arbuckle, Ingrid Bergman and Errol Flynn — controversy had become a resource. Madonna didn’t provoke randomly; she choreographed provocation, each gesture and outfit a calculated engagement with public sensibilities. Audiences, she seemed to conclude, actually enjoyed being outraged: the surge of anger, shock and indignation was oddly satisfying. This may appear obvious today. In the 1980s, it was radically contrarian.

Her 1989 album marked what might have been a Eureka! moment. Madonna appeared to sense that audiences would demand ever more from stars. This was before ’s launched in 1992, allowing viewers to eavesdrop by watching what became known as reality TV. Madonna seems to have arrived at a broadly similar conclusion: Audiences were turning into peeping Toms.

Her ambition was not to shock for its own sake, but to maintain attention by disclosing more and more of what once passed as a private life — and without inhibition. Madonna became, in essence, her own living experiment in making her personal life open to inspection. Before her, entertainers like Elizabeth Taylor had, in the 1960s, allowed private lives to seep into public view via a more cautious media, but this was rare or sensational and delivered to surprised audiences by the then-nascent paparazzi. Madonna made it a career strategy, presenting her personal self as indistinguishable from her stage persona and inviting audiences to witness. Not just witness: Audiences were encouraged to judge her; condemning Madonna was integral to her success.

Like Semtex

The 1990s solidified Madonna’s role as a cultural provocateur. The Madonna: Truth or Dare (1991) documented her tour with unprecedented candor, offering glimpses into backstage rivalries, rehearsals and intimate moments, all alongside the theatricality of her onstage performances. The film predated reality television by years, yet already anticipated its voracious appetite for the minutiae of celebrity.

Around the same period, her book Sex and the album pushed boundaries of sexual representation, blending performance, fetishism and artifice. She intentionally offended, proving unequivocally that scandal was like Semtex, a powerful explosive, but very pliable so that, handled carefully, it can be turned into different shapes. In the years that followed, Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian corroborated this when they appeared on that would have ruined show business careers in earlier times.

Yet Madonna’s influence went beyond shock and outrage. Critics like recognized her as a harbinger of postfeminist performance: She demonstrated how a woman could be sensual, assertive, ambitious and aggressive while curating her image in a way that conferred power. From this perspective, being sexy was a form of empowerment. Madonna’s conquests were both commercial and symbolic, reframing what it meant to be a female entertainer in a male-dominated industry. Her affectations, from the pink cone bra to platinum blonde hair, were signifiers of her autonomy.

By the mid-1990s, Madonna was both a diva in the operatic sense and a pioneer in media literacy. Her aforementioned 1992 renegotiation with Time Warner secured her own record label. She remained a polarizing figure: The world alternately praised and disparaged her, keeping her relevant. She had transformed scandal into art and fame into an instrument of social influence. The celebrity landscape she helped sculpt is what we see all around us today.

Even into the 2000s and 2010s, Madonna’s career reflected a Darwinian adaptability to changing environments. The 2003 MTV Video Music Awards with Britney Spears sparked a viral debate, raising questions about bisexuality. Tours such as and albums like demonstrated a willingness to collaborate with younger artists while retaining her signature sound. Her postfeminist sensibilities, rooted in self-expression and independence, carried through to her later albums and public appearances. At the 2023 Grammys, she to critics, accusing them of “ageism and misogyny.”

Diva provocatrix

Today, Madonna’s presence at Milan Fashion Week is emblematic of both her longevity and her continued authorship of the fame narrative. She’s still a model for what it means to inhabit the public sphere on one’s own terms. Unlike many successors, she �󲹲���’t become her own tribute act. She’s refused to trade on nostalgia and strives to remain relevant. A figure whose demands, exacting nature and unyielding vision have shaped not only the entertainment industry but the very ways in which audiences understand and appreciate spectacle, Madonna evokes a reminder about the way we live — vicariously, voyeuristically, derivatively and by proxy.

Her legacy is inseparable from the media she mastered and, to be fair, was mastered by. Madonna didn’t merely reflect social and technological changes — she anticipated them, attempted to manipulate them and tried to force the world to respond. It did: From MTV to social media, from the controversy of Like a Prayer to the candor of Truth or Dare, she engineered a dialogue with audiences that has altered our relationship to celebrities. Many will not think this is such a good thing.

Madonna belongs in the same pantheon as Maria Callas (1923–77), Judy Garland (1922–69) and Barbra Streisand (b. 1942), all imperious figures feared as much as revered for their exacting standards and refusal to accept reality when it failed to conform to their visions. Like them, Madonna has attracted detractors as well as worshippers, her difficulty inseparable from her distinction. Yet she added something new to the tradition: Madonna was not simply a diva but a diva provocatrix, a performer who treated outrage as an artistic medium. While there are many contemporary stars of immense wealth and visibility, none appears willing — or permitted — to embody the risk, volatility and sheer force that once defined the type. Perhaps Madonna truly is the last of them.

[Ellis Cashmore is the author of ]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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These questions followed me since I began researching for my Poder Suave — Soft Power, launched in Brazil in 2017. That following year, my book was a finalist in the Jabuti Awards, the most important literary award in Latin America under the creative economy category, which recognizes artistic contributions to economic growth. I focused my research on cultural soft power — power that is seductive and that draws in viewers worldwide. Some examples include Hollywood and Bollywood movies, French fashion, Russian ballet, the British Invasion of the 1960s (bands like the Beatles) and Brazilian bossa nova, Carnaval and telenovelas.

A general conclusion from my research shows that what society deems as desirable, such as believing one actor is persuasive or buying into certain fashion choices, is built upon accepted trends. With corporate and governmental support, these manifestations of “soft power” can reach new heights — like how Russia used ballet as a diplomatic tool during the Soviet era. Cultural influence is not limited to wealthy countries. Indian film and Brazilian music, for example, both reach wide international audiences.

Via the author.

However, the importance of trends, while real, did not satisfy my curiosity. I pondered over why some underprivileged creatives emerge onto the global stage, whereas other artists never reach their potential, despite having numerous advantages. What is the secret behind their success or failure?

I investigated this unsolved mystery in my doctoral thesis on socio-cultural progress with the help of the Capes Foundation Scholarship (Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education). After five years of research, my thesis and newest book Poder Cultural finally provides the answers.

First, cultural power is the ability to universally influence people into thinking a movie, work of art or related product is good. Cultural power can move other countries’ economies, shape consumer habits and create new industries. Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, for instance, contributed $4.3 billion to the US GDP, to Bloomberg Economics. The tour largely boosted the hospitality industry, including hotels, local businesses and tourism revenues.

Even writers go through an audiovisual medium, such as movies, TV shows, telenovelas or social media, to make their books relevant. was an unknown writer until her video went viral on TikTok and promoted Shadow Work Journal to a bestseller.

Relevant politics in cultural power

Research has proven that artists with culturally relevant attitudes and products are more likely to become powerful. Emerald Fennel had never won an award as an actress, writer or director until her movie Promising Young Woman won the 2020 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Its violence, not unlike films such as First Blood, spoke to young media consumers who are sensitive to themes of female oppression and Eurocentrism.

Another example is Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan, who is better known in India than Brad Pitt. How is that possible? Khan is an undoubtedly attractive man. This fact alone gets him attention in the movie industry. In the beginning, Khan, like Pitt, used his good looks to obtain roles, even cheap flicks that would only be watched once. After ascending to stardom, Khan was able to reinvent his image by selecting roles with more cultural relevance. Take Khan’s performance as the alcoholic in Devdas (2002), which brought awareness to the struggles of addiction. 

Both Khan and Pitt support international causes that positively shape their images: Pitt is involved with One Campaign, which fights against AIDS and poverty in poor countries; Khan is the ambassador of Pulse Polio, the National AIDS Control Organization and the Make-a-Wish Foundation in India. However, Khan has one notable advantage over his competitor. He has a greater command over social media, which he uses to mobilize his appeal to millions. Khan posts about his children and his long marriage to Gauri Chibber. His 42 million followers on Facebook, 30 million on Instagram and 42 million on Twitter eat up his family narrative. Days after his interview with David Letterman on My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, the television host named him “the greatest star of the world.”

Major components of disproportionate recognition

Both stars and politicians use social media to increase their power. In the music world, video clips are the most important audiovisual tool for singers to achieve cultural strength. Musicians Dua Lipa and Anitta must know this well. Their power extrapolates to music. In 2020, Dua Lipa posted a video for her 46 million followers on Instagram, criticizing the way the Israeli Defense Forces treat Palestinians. Israeli NGO Im Tirtzu opened a petition demanding that Dua Lipa’s songs be banned from the Israeli army radio, the most popular in the country, although her request was not granted. Likewise, Brazilian, far-right, former president Jair Bolsonaro criticized Anitta on his social media for supporting the legalization of marijuana. Bolsonaro also used this platform to denounce former candidate and then-elected president Lula in the 2022 election over her views on the use of the Brazilian flag. 

Dua Lipa and Anitta’s content share similarities regarding aesthetics, techniques and lyrics. However, what makes Dua Lipa more effective, despite Anitta launching twice as many videos, is another crucial aspect for cultural power: language. Dua Lipa has always sung in the most popular language in the world, English, which helped close publicity contracts for the singer.  She also developed her career in one of the world’s fashion capitals, London. Located outside any “English centers,” Anitta invested in more English videos, like “Girl from Rio,” “Downtown,” “Faking Love,” and “Boys Don’t Cry” to be more widely noticed.

Are these aspects to obtain cultural power fair? Definitely not. Because of these constraints, many culturally significant artists are ignored.  Helena Solberg, for instance, was the only female director from Cinema Novo, the Brazilian New Cinema movement from the 1960’s and the most important film movement of the southern hemisphere. Her movies discussed the roots of the underdevelopment situation in Latin America. She lived from 1971 to 1990 in the US and gained recognition with movies like The Brazilian Connection (1983), Home of the Brave (1986) and Carmen Miranda — Bananas is My Business (1994).  However, none of her films infiltrated Hollywood since they were independent productions, giving her much less cultural power than expected. 

Another example of disproportionate, language-biased representation is the career of Senegalese filmmaker Safi Faye.  She was the mother of African cinema and the first Sub-Saharan African woman to direct a commercially distributed feature film, Kaddu Beykat, released in 1975. Her movies were essential to understand the lives of women in African tribes, a genre which had not been explored. Yet, she was never given global recognition since her films were in languages like Serer and Wolof, African dialects that remain absent from Google. Faye’s death in 2024 was mostly ignored by major news channels and cultural magazines in the Western world. The case of Safi Faye proves that what is available to Western viewers is very much regulated by Eurocentric cultural tastes.

The purpose of researching Poder Cultural was not only to understand the unspoken rules in achieving stardom, but mainly to show how the dice are rolled in arts and entertainment industries across countries of differing wealth and privilege. Exposing inequality and analyzing success are the most important steps to change the rules of the game and, therefore, make cultural power more accessible to all. 

[ and edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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When I stepped out of the airport and into Las Vegas, I felt like I had entered the outer edge of the universe. The low skyline met with the ancient seabed, and the city seemed to float in the azure sky. It was as if I were in a snow globe with toylike monuments — the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building and a pyramid were all around me. As night fell, the proprietors of the globe flicked a switch, lighting Las Vegas up. “Sin City” swaggered to center stage out of an innocent daytime.

And then there was Sphere. It was like its own planet within the galaxy of Las Vegas. Its phantasmic exterior lighting made it appear as a giant, extraterrestrial eye. U2 wielded Sphere to eclipse the typical characterizations of the infamous city.

U2’s shows at Sphere went beyond concerts; they were full-body journeys that enveloped each audience member with wraparound illusions. This held true even at the very outset, as the dome was made of faux cathedral stone that seemed to spiral to the stars above.

Although drawing from multiple albums, the shows on U2’s 1991 album Achtung Baby. The band, with lead singer Bono, had previously staged the album in the 1992 Tour. Sphere, out with the world’s largest LED screens and costing $2.3 billion to construct, opened the door to a new type of concert.

Intensity vs intimacy and meeting past selves

U2’s performance style had taken a turn in 1992, from relatively unembellished stage setups to sensory overload. With their revolution of rock show techniques, fans grew concerned that the spectacle could diminish the music. That’s why it is paramount to learn how the band approached its new show in this regard.

After my trip to Las Vegas, I had the opportunity to interview Bono about the show.

India Nye Wenner: The first topic I want to discuss is U2’s relationship to the audience in the fresh Achtung Baby production, and how you dealt with the immersiveness of Sphere.

Bono: Originally, when Achtung Baby came out, we had a tour called Zoo TV. Part of it was deliberately disorientating. We wanted not to have a friendly relationship with our audience. It was a kind of confrontational relationship. We bombarded our audience with media; I shapeshifted into your worst-nightmare rock star. It was the time of grunge, and everyone was kind of thinking, “We’re really authentic, man, we’re wearing plaid and we don’t believe in even a light show.” We said to ourselves, “We’ll go in the exact opposite direction and be the opposite of authentic, and we’ll bombard our audience.” These were more art principles than music principles.

With this show, it’s the same. It starts in what’s known as Plato’s Cave. But it starts, really, at the invention of fire, if you want to think of it like that — early experiences of cave paintings, aloneness. I walk out on stage without any glasses and I sing this ancient Irish melody, and it feels like you’re in a cave. And then it quickly moves to a nightclub in Berlin in the 90s and it gets all very kind of decadent and fun and playful, and we become your worst nightmare of rock stars — which is kind of fun, too, ’cause playing that up is fun. So we let the ego run rampant for a while, so even that’s not super connected. In the middle […] you have songs like “One,” which do connect. But it doesn’t become truly intimate until we get to the bit where we turn off the technology.

Wenner: As an attendee of two of U2’s Sphere concerts, I can attest to the energy shift that accompanied the middle of the show.

Bono: We break things down into this kind of acoustic, radical intimacy, I would call it. Because of the acoustic technology in Sphere, Sphere itself is a speaker. And no matter where you are in Sphere, you get perfect sound. You’re able to whisper and be heard at the very back. So we realized that the acoustic set where we’re just playing acoustic guitar and these deconstructed versions of our songs is as powerful as the big visual extravaganza. Because you had been so disoriented by the first part of the show coming at you at full throttle, when we got to this moment of intimacy, it was really intimate. People started to sing, people got very emotional and they opened up more.

Then we get to this bit that I’m just talking to you about: the breakdown acoustic set on [musician] Brian Eno’s stage, a turntable with algorithms that change its colors. Then we get back into more visuals and then finally into this cathedral of the natural world, which [stage designer] Es Devlin designed with all the endangered species of Nevada. And people get really emotional at that point. And I’m looking out there, and there are people with tears in their eyes — a lot of them are men. And sometimes I’m one of them.

Wenner: Each U2 show at Sphere lasted a little over two hours. With over 20 songs, 120 minutes, 18,600 attendees and 1.2 million LEDs, I’m curious to hear how you made sense of such vast potential.

Bono: The arc of the show is the thing that’s most successful. In theater, you have a sort of arc. And to get to what the Greeks call catharsis, you have to go on a journey. So I think that’s why this show worked well. I think you allow the visuals to overpower the music because in the end, the music comes back and […] wins. I wondered: If it was like that all the way through, would it have been as powerful? I don’t think so. It’s the arc, this theatrical arc.

You just always enjoy a three-act structure, believe it or not, even though most rock ’n’ roll bands are like jukeboxes. They just play their songs, and it’s great, because it might be different every night. With [rock singer] Bruce Springsteen, you never know what you’re gonna get when you see him play, which is amazing. Bruce is so clever. He creates a three-act structure just with his music every night. But to do it with visuals of this scale, you have to lock in a few things. And so in that sense, it’s a little restrictive. But I think it’s a worthwhile compromise to make.

Wenner: In your Zoo TV Tour of Achtung Baby, you were 32 years old. Now you’re 63, and you’ve just performed the same songs you wrote 31 years ago.

On top of revisiting the past, as lead singer, you were tasked with maintaining harmony as a pillar amidst the tsunami of Sphere’s visuals. U2 was just four men within the universe of lights. What did you learn about yourself as a performer throughout the show?

Bono: I have to confess to you that I still suffer from a kind of stage fright. I can wake up in the morning, and it’s not that I think I can’t sing the songs — it’s just I wonder if I’ll have the essential energy to really make tonight the best night. U2’s grandiosity or arrogance, or whatever you want to call it, is [that] we want every night we play to be not just a Friday night, we want it to be New Year’s Eve. Every night. That’s our insanity. We go out with that kind of commitment.

What I was so surprised by performing those sounds was stepping inside the songs. I discovered the person who wrote them 20 years ago, 30 years ago, whatever it was. And it was a challenge — you meet your different selves. I could see some ways that I’d grown and become, I think, a better version of myself. But I could see in others where I hadn’t grown.

In order to sing these songs, I have to really get inside them. The songs towards the end are very emotional; they’re quite operatic. To be able to sing them, I gave everything I had — and I discovered that I didn’t want to go out after the show. Or I couldn’t meet anyone before. When I was younger, even ten years ago, I’d be the guy who’d be saying hello to everybody, going out afterwards, having a laugh. But this show was very demanding, so I accepted that while I’m here, this show owns me. My best friends would come by and I wouldn’t get to see them. I’d be preserving my voice. So it’s been quite challenging on that front. But when I’m on stage and with the band, I am so alive. And I’m okay if it’s just two hours a day that I’m fully alive.

Achtung Baby’s new relevance and the perils of love

Early in the show, a projected stone wall cracks apart. This is a nod to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. It allows brilliant light to seep through its cracks and set the venue aglow. Today, in contrast to the unity that came in 1989 in Germany, walls are being built up across the world. Bitter divides have gone up in the Middle East, social battlements mortared with intolerance in America. And Russia continues to brutally encircle Ukraine.

By putting the spotlight onto Achtung Baby again decades later, U2 urges listeners to hear the songs in the larger context of our modern world.

Wenner: What made Achtung Baby, as opposed to The Joshua Tree or Songs of Innocence, the album to be re-energized and to bring Sphere to life?

Bono: We’d made two albums before Achtung Baby: One was The Joshua Tree, and another was called Rattle and Hum, which was really an extension of The Joshua Tree. So we really wanted to move away from a focus on the United States, on America and its mythology, to a more European perspective. It just felt fresh for us to get involved in electronic music. We went to Berlin just as the wall was coming down and the Soviet Union was ending, and freedom was growing around the world. It was a very exciting moment to be in Berlin, when the wall came down and the world changed shape almost overnight. It was an astonishing moment in history. 

Even though our song, “One,” was written with very personal themes — “We’re one, but we’re not the same, we get to carry each other” — it resonated in Berlin because East and West Germany were coming together. That song has gone on to mean a lot to people who are at odds with each other or trying to move towards some kind of union that’s difficult, whether it’s in a marriage or a country. And it just seemed that Achtung Baby and the album that followed it, Zooropa, was the right thing for us to do in the 90s.

It’s like an artist does a retrospective because they want people to remember their earlier work. A museum will curate their work from a period and you go and re-experience it some years later. It felt like that. It was like an anniversary. It was the right time to remind ourselves, as well as the rest of the world, that we’ve made this album. And some of the themes of unity, or the lack thereof, were present again — because now the wall is starting to be built back up. So I think that song in particular might be newly relevant.

After an opening of staggering lights and illusions, Sphere wrapped itself in solid-colored wallpapers, and the music took hold of the room. The song was an unsettling one. As silhouettes of butterflies began fluttering against the cobalt blue backdrop, Bram van den Berg — filling in on drums for Larry Mullen Jr, who was recuperating from surgery — struck up a quiet but gripping rhythm. The foursome, including van den Berg, Adam Clayton, David “Edge” Evans and Bono, began to play “Love is Blindness.”

Wenner: What was your thinking behind pairing “Love is Blindness” with the ��������-���-����è�Ա� of butterflies and brooding blue?

Bono: The short answer is it’s setting up what comes later: the ode to the natural world, the , Es Devlin’s work. But we made it a little eerie and a little spooky. I’m very interested that you should mention “Love is Blindness.” We did the best version we’ve ever done in our life last night. I couldn’t believe it. Sometimes a song can come into itself 20, 30 years later. I’m really enjoying singing that at the moment, and it’s such a bleak song in one sense. How love can turn in on itself. Love is blindness. This thing that should be light itself, love, can turn sour and lead you into a dark place.

You’ll see this in relationships. I imagine you’ll see it in some of your own or your friends’. They’ll get into relationships… and they’re just not good for them. It can overpower you. When I was writing it, I was throwing in some terrible, frightening images, like car bombs. It’s very melodramatic stuff, but it’s like a cabaret song.

Have you heard of the tradition? I had these really extreme images which I’d taken from Ireland as we were dealing with terrorism and trying to get a peace agreement with paramilitaries. Last night, I was singing it, asking myself, “Where did these lyrics come from? How did I write them?” They’re so intense. And there is something about grasping the nettle. It’s okay sometimes to stare at the world and see that occasionally, it can have a dark heart. You don’t want to stay there, but it’s okay to look at it at times in your life and just say, “Here’s a problem. Here it is. I’m stating it, and this relationship is not going well. It’s not good. It’s going to blow up my life.” And the person who’s writing the song, the character at the center of the song, the protagonist — his relationship is destroying him.

Finding awe in nature and people

As the audience sat in Sphere, transfixed by the lights and absorbed into the music, we suddenly found ourselves outside. The walls had become transparent like a crystal ball, and our attention fixed upon a surreally mundane vicinity: a drab car lot, hotels and a fluorescent Ferris wheel. And before our eyes, in a stop-motion erosion of time, Las Vegas began to disappear. From top to bottom, the framework of each building was exposed and dismantled, until we were returned to the sweeping desert that lay beneath the glamorous city. Water sprung from sandy fissures and washed over the land until Las Vegas was rendered a placid sea, the ancient ocean floor it once was.

Bono: Making the building disappear and then making Las Vegas disappear came to me very early on. I realized that the resolution of the screens was so high that if you showed people what was going on outside, at the same time, people would confuse reality, and it would look like the building disappeared. And from that we had this idea: What happens if then we deconstructed Las Vegas? What if we brought Las Vegas back 100 years? Then what if we brought it back a million years? Because the Nevada desert wasn’t the desert then; there was water over it.

The show was a spiritual experience in itself, complete with cathedral-like imagery consistent with the motif of faith present in many of U2’s songs. Prior to the band taking stage, Sphere projected the stonework of a gothic cathedral that appeared to stretch all the way to heaven. As the show started, the stone panels were traded in for codes of neon numbers. They flickered as they proliferated into a digital age church, a rainbow of integers that rose to a peak. They closed in on the audience, locking viewers into a sort of digital infinity.

Elvis Presley then swooped in to free the audience from this box, rocketing them into a celestial stained glass window of glamor and allure, joined by gilded displays of gamblers and ravishing women. After Las Vegas’s debauchery, the audience ended with exultation in a cathedral of the natural world, filled with the endangered creatures of the Mojave Desert. At the center of each distinct cathedral stood one continuity: the preacher U2, guiding guests along the pilgrimage through each facet of human nature.

Wenner: What did you want people to take away from the church of U2?

Bono: We wanted people to understand that every one of us has many different selves. From a very egocentric self, to a playful self, to an earnest, caring, change-the-world self. The thing that we wanted people to leave the building with was a word that you Americans have ruined. And the word is “awe.” It’s one of my favorite words, but I know everyone says, “everything’s awesome!” And I always laugh saying the word, but I actually like the word. But we use it too lightly. It’s not just Americans; Irish people do, too. But awe is, I suppose, wonder?

And the thing that U2 has always challenged, in all our different incarnations, was jadedness. Being bored. I have never been bored. Maybe I was bored when I was 16 in school, but once I joined U2, I could write songs, and there was always stuff for me to do. And I just wanted people to wake up in the world, and realize it’s awesome, and realize that the world is fragile. It’s a fragile ecosystem. We have to take care of it and we have to take care of each other. 

The sins of Las Vegas are just more obvious. What’s going on in Las Vegas does not stay in Las Vegas. It is going on all over the world. There’s that kind of hard commerce, but there’s a lot of people who work really hard. I always try and thank people, the taxi drivers, the servers. The people who work there, they work around the clock for people who probably don’t work as hard as them. And it’s a little microcosm of America.

We live in a time where people are very judgmental of each other — your politics, where you’re at in your life. And if this show succeeds, people will come out caring about the person they’re walking out with a little more, and a little less cynical at the world around them. As people are leaving, as well as being in awe of the natural world and being alive, I’d like people to notice each other more, be grateful to each other. And as they look around at this sort of adult playpen, kind of smile at the human condition, and go, “Yeah, we are funny. We’re funny, us human beings.”

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All of the studios were founded in the first decades of the 20th century by immigrants with little or no experience in art or entertainment. And most of them, with little money. They skyrocketed to wealth in the mid-1920’s, beginning with a new system that controlled actors, movie distribution and film showings in the US and abroad.

In the previous century, Hollywood studios faced the same challenges, from the 1929 crisis to the blockbuster era that began in 1977 with Star Wars. These regenerations cut the marketing department’s film budget and major decision center in half. These changes parallel the modern-day effect of new players Apple and Amazon which penetrate Hollywood to its core and wield even more power than Netflix.

Apple Inc’s stock market value reached for the first time last June. Apple TV+ was launched in 2019. It was housed in a newly created studio in Culver City and received a record number of Emmy Award nominations in 2023, with being the only series to earn Best Drama and Best New Series in the same year. Amazon is now the world’s fifth largest publicly traded company and worth . Prime Video was launched in 2006 covering 200 countries. Amazon MGM Studios racked up Emmy nominations in 2023, its first year with Amazon. Amazon Prime Video show The Marvelous Maisel (2017-2023) won 80 Nominations and 22 Emmys during its five seasons, making it the most celebrated streaming TV comedy in history.

Meanwhile, historically significant Hollywood studios disappeared. Responsible for the production of movies like Titanic (1997) and Avatar (2009), Walt Disney Studios bought 20th Century Fox in 2019. Its movies and series streamed on a separate service, Star+, in regions like Latin America. Disney announced in December 2023 that Star+ would no longer exist and all its content would be transferred to Disney+. Another major film studio of the last century, Columbia Pictures, never even had a streaming service. Its shows dispersed over many disparate platforms. Last May, HBO Max acquired Disney brand Discovery+ and renamed it Max.

Dominance of streaming

More streaming mergers are expected to happen in the following years. Across this battlefield tech companies which own streaming services are more likely to absorb what is left of historically recognized film studios. The modern era is not the first time a non-art-and-entertainment company bought a Hollywood studio. In 1982, Coca-Cola acquired Columbia Pictures for 750 million USD. Yet their efforts were hampered by the fickle entertainment business which nearly drove them to shelve classic movies like Ghostbusters (1984). Just seven years later in 1989, Coca-Cola sold Columbia for the Japanese Sony Pictures.

Unlike Columbia under Sony Pictures, tech companies like Amazon and Apple have achieved success — Emmy and Oscar nominations and awards — without a previous Hollywood studio under its umbrella. Tech brands absorb Hollywood soft power, the ability to seduce rather than coerce in areas like arts and entertainment. Sony Pictures, for instance, has invested over 3 billion USD in Columbia Pictures. What impact will Tech Hollywood continue to have on the production of films and shows? On the future of art and entertainment?

Algorithm and AI Transforms Entertainment

Hollywood studios hired humans in the 20th century to evaluate their new releases. They used “Previews” to keep scenes that earned paid audience approval during the first cut screening and eliminate those that did not.

With tech companies running what’s left of Hollywood, artificial intelligence and algorithms may dictate the shape of films and TV shows. signed a deal with Cinelytic to use AI to decide which movies to commission and determine the profitability of actors in specific territories. In 2016, tech company AT&T shelled out $85 billion to acquire Warner Bros. Other studios soon rode the AI wave resulting in a mass strike of actors and writers who insisted upon improved pay and recognition.

The streaming Golden Age is coming to an end with minor services and major film studios from the 20th century giving way to digital entertainment. Meanwhile, Netflix determines the future of its shows with an that has caused a disproportionate cancellation of series made by women. This backfired when many accepted shows did not reach their second season, calling into question whether AI should be the judge.

Now, tech companies that own streaming services are demolishing 75-day exclusive theatrical windows, making it easier for people to watch films right from their homes. The effect is crushing in-person theaters, which have not financially recovered from their drop in viewership owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. Perhaps the US Justice Department’s antitrust laws were justified–twice against Hollywood studios. The first time, the 1948 Hollywood Antitrust Case tried to reign in Hollywood’s intimidating behavior. The second time, the US Justice Department implemented the financial syndication and interest rules that regulated ABC, NBC and CBS shows in primetime in the 1970s with the intent of encouraging independent production companies.

This century, though, a much more dangerous kind of oligopoly is being formed. The giant conglomerates Apple, Amazon and AT&T are sucking what’s left of film studios and using algorithms and AI to maximize profits and minimize costs. The 2023 strike in Los Angeles was not enough for another major Justice intervention in the US. So, until that happens, let us see the next meals tech companies will devour in Los Angeles while Tech Hollywood becomes a game with many fewer players than in old times.

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Singers like , with her soulful voice and introspective lyrics, , with his silky-smooth melodies, and the incomparable , whose Afro-fusion mastery knows no bounds, have captivated global audiences. Their popularity has spread to countries such as the United Kingdom, Portugal, and the United States. Worldwide streams amounted to in 2022. 

Afrobeats, from the rich musical heritage of Africa, fuses traditional rhythms with modern influences to create an irresistible tapestry of sound. With roots that stretch across the continent, Afrobeats encapsulates the vibrancy of Ghana’s — a genre that combines elements of rock and jazz — and the pulse of West African percussion from neighboring countries.

Music with a message

Afrobeats conveys messages of African liberation and culture. Songs like “” by Fela Kuti critique oppressive regimes, while “” by Burna Boy celebrates African resilience and unity. “” by Master KG (featuring Nomcebo Zikode), though not strictly Afrobeats as it also borrows from gospel-house, became a global anthem of hope during the COVID-19 pandemic. This musical renaissance has united Africa, reclaiming its narrative and breaking free from the chains of colonial history. Afrobeats artists shed light on the beauty of Africa and the African experience. They also challenge , such as the idea that hip-hop has negative influences on youth.

Emerging artist ‘s profound voice captures the complexity of young adulthood, offering solace to a generation navigating their identities. Africa is, after all, the in the world. Starr expresses that with confidence anything is possible for young people, even the unimaginable. In her song “,” she sings, “Espiritu Fortuna, I go make you jo dada, shey you getty the power, sweety passy amala ketu.” In other words, “we are blessed beyond our knowledge to make any of our dreams come true.” In her lead single “,” Starr dismisses those who underestimate her because of her age and gender, reiterating that change can be made at any age, sector, and in any region of the globe.

Hailing from Ghana, King Promise has already etched his name in the annals of Afrobeats with his melodic prowess. His dulcet tones dance over Highlife-infused rhythms, creating a signature sound that radiates joy and nostalgia. Promise’s rise exemplifies the genre’s power to forge connections, both within and beyond borders, while recognizing the vast culture of Africa. His popular songs, such as “,” “,” and “,” not only showcase King Promise’s musical talent but also resonate with diverse audiences. Through these tracks, he infuses elements of traditional African sounds with modern beats, creating a unique sonic experience that celebrates the continent’s rich musical heritage and helps break stereotypes.

A conversation about celebrating cultural heritage would be remiss without paying homage to Burna Boy. His ascent from the streets of Port Harcourt to the is a testament to the ���ڰ��Dz��𲹳ٲ�’ transformative impact. Burna Boy’s genre-bending and socially conscious lyrics have redefined modern African music. Songs such as “” speak of the joy and uniqueness each country has in identifying as African. Unapologetic anthems like “” and “” touch on shifting from false narratives (i.e., colonialist perspectives) and standing true to one’s origin. In “,” Burna Boy sings, “T���y wanna tell you o, tell you o, tell you o/Another story o, story o, story o.” He has become a symbol of African pride and resistance.

A confident, growing continent

As Afrobeats shapes the world’s perception of Africa as a cultural trendsetter, it also emblematizes Africa’s into a political and economic force on the global stage. The African Union’s to foster unity and cooperation among member states are yielding tangible results, as seen in initiatives addressing regional conflicts, economic development and .

Some notable examples of include promoting renewable energy sources, implementing waste reduction and recycling programs, and advocating for responsible land use and conservation efforts. The African Union has been actively eco-friendly agricultural practices, such as agroforestry and organic farming, to ensure long-term environmental health and food security for its member states.

In the realm of trade and investment, the establishment of the Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) heralds a new era of intracontinental commerce. The AfCFTA aims to boost intra-African trade and economic integration. The increased interconnectivity opens up African economies, entrepreneurs, producers and artists not only to each other, but to the . This exposure has increased for African products, and African music, both within the continent and internationally. With its vast resources, youthful population and burgeoning economies, the continent is poised to make its mark on the global dynamic.

���ڰ��Dz��𲹳ٲ�’ serves as a poignant backdrop to Africa’s emancipation from the remnants of colonialism. The “winds of change” are in the air, and former colonial powers must now reckon with a new Africa that demands recognition and equality. African nations such as Mali and Burkina Faso are their sovereignty by marking an end to the “Francafrique” strategy in which France dominated post-independence relationships with its former colonies. Channeling the same spirit that enlivens Afrobeats — bold, unapologetic and eager for liberation — into their diplomatic negotiations, these nations are in pursuit of a true partnership across the African continent, free from ndertones.

The world is “recognizing that Africa’s story is no longer one of marginalization, but of unyielding .”

[ produced this piece and is a partner of 51�Թ�.]

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The song has a curious history. María Grever, a Mexican composer, originally composed it. She gave it the Spanish title “Cuando vuelva a tu lado” (When I Return to Your Side). It got its current title when it was adapted to English. For two decades, “What a Difference a Day Makes” lived on the sidelines as a somewhat recognizable tune. In 1944, the title achieved some limited popularity thanks to Mexican-American singer Andy Russell’s bilingual version, which made it to number 15 in the charts.

In the dawning age of the transistor radio, Dinah Washington’s 1959 R&B version became a top ten hit. That sealed its reputation as a song every serious singer and jazz musician had to learn to perform. From then on, popular singers from Frank Sinatra to Dean Martin, Bobby Darin, Natalie Cole, Rod Stewart, Cher and many, many others made it part of their repertoire.

Why bring up this bit of curious US folklore 90 years later?

There are moments when history stalls and others where it accelerates. We now have the leisure to put 2023 in the rearview mirror. Future historians will almost certainly see it as a year of historical acceleration. A bit like 1959, a time when everything seemed to be on a fairly even, predictable keel for those who were living through it.

Political history follows similar patterns to cultural history. They both change over time, in ways that those living through the transitional moments fail to perceive. The practices as well as the tastes of the past often disappear and may even appear to the following generations as incomprehensible. The vagaries of popular music, especially in our consumer society, offer serious matter for reflection.

The commercial music scene has changed radically over the past six decades, as it already had between 1934 and 1959. For many commentators on US culture, the latter date represents the crucial moment when a shift took place from postwar puritanism and buttoned-down conformity to the liberation of the sixties, with the hippies, the Civil Rights movement, the sexual revolution and the golden age of a rock’n’roll, a US invention transformed and brought up to date by British artists.

The 1998 movie Pleasantville appears to take place in 1959, judging from its use of Miles Davis’s “So What” as background music for one scene. All jazz musicians acknowledge that Davis’s album “Kind of Blue” literally changed the nature of jazz. The movie’s director and producers in 1998 were obviously aware of that. 

Pleasantville follows two youths who are magically transported from the 90s to the title town in the 50s. They disturb the innocent residents with their relatively uninhibited manners. The 1950s scenes in the movie were filmed in black and white. When manners and morals began changing midway through the movie, the filming changes to technicolor. For the producers, that symbolized how Americans visualize that transitional moment in their culture. Things would never be the same after that. 

A tale of two decades (the fifties and sixties)

The cable TV series Mad Men (2007), focused on Madison Avenue’s advertising industry in the sixties, ran for eight years. Picking up where Pleasantville left off, the first episode begins in 1960, the start of a new and radically different decade that would transform the 1950s’ consumerist culture into something wildly different.

Mad Men builds its drama around the careers of high-achieving advertising executives. The plot is regularly punctuated by historical and cultural events. These include two Kennedy assassinations, war in Vietnam, a moon landing, drugs, the deaths of MLK and Marilyn Monroe, and all the other excitement of the times kicked off in the decade that followed that seminal year of 1959. Both works look back at the rapid metamorphosis that American culture underwent in those decades.

All this is to say that some years do make a difference. 1959 was one of those years. So, I maintain, is 2023. Something, or indeed many things possibly equally significant happened in this past year. When producers of Hollywood and TV dramas three or four decades from now look back at 2023, they may have a similar impression. There will nevertheless be a significant  difference. This time around it isn’t just US culture that is transitioning. It’s global culture 

What will 2023 be remembered for? Here are seven of the most obvious things. Future historians will certainly find others.

— The continuation of a violent and, in the likely view of future
historians, senseless and avoidable war in Eastern Europe, which
has already changed the shape of international relations.

— The start of another absurd and even more tragic war in Gaza that
is likely to have even greater historical consequences.

— The invasion of a group, not so much of as mind
snatchers, led by OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, with a
slew of others on their way.

— The visible beginnings of the dedollarization movement
accelerated by the expansion of BRICS (an intergovernmental
organization named for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South
Africa).

— The of the notion of “the Global South” in our
everyday vocabulary.

— The predictable growing momentum of another more-
traumatizing-than-ever US presidential campaign leading up to
the November 2024 election,

— Gathering evidence that this really is Cold War 2.0. This time,
though, there are two hot wars that have the potential to spark
World War III and a nuclear war, whose specter haunted my
generation’s youth during the original Cold War.

As the year 2024 approaches — seated atop “time’s winged chariot hurrying” ever nearer, in the of Andrew Marvell — the real question concerns how the tense plot of all these abruptly begun, ambiguously evolving and clearly unfinished events will wend towards some kind of acceptable denouement or a more traumatizing development.

Ranking years past

As we look back at recent history, 2016 stands as a landmark year that saw Brexit and Donald Trump’s rise to the US presidency. Trump had the effect of putting history itself in a state of suspended animation before the unanticipated invasion of COVID-19. 2020 stood out as the year of the pandemic, marking the confusion of a clueless, globalized world that suddenly woke up to the reality that it had no idea how it had found itself in this predicament and even less about how to respond appropriately.

As Joe Biden assumed the throne of the 75-year-old “rules-based international order,” 2021 turned out to be a year of building suspense, as a new shift to normalized behavior was announced. The major event of that year was the US withdrawal from a 20-year engagement in Afghanistan, which momentarily seemed to reduce the tension. But the building pressure — some of it deviously planned — exploded in February 2022 with the war in Ukraine.

A new year has now begun. Between wars and crucial elections at various points of the globe, 2024 is likely to be loaded with drama that dwarfs that of the previous years. Anything can happen. None of it looks as if it will be easy to manage.

Anyone in the media should know by now that high drama is good for business. Catastrophic drama is great for business. The hyperreal shenanigans associated with Donald Trump’s election and presidency, including his chaotic exit from the White House, enabled the media to live off five full years of a manufactured, worthy-of-Hollywood scenario called Russiagate. That was mostly comedy, but in February 2022 it morphed into global tragedy as the already deeply detested Russia invaded Ukraine. 

In 2024, there will be new drama. At 51�Թ�, we are intent on covering it from multiple perspectives to avoid being captured by only one narrative. We will need your help more than ever. We need the insights and direct testimony of our authors, which potentially includes all of you. But, most importantly of all, we need you to keep thinking. In the dawning age of AI, human thinking will be our most precious asset.

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For many, she embodies a toxic environment that sexually commodifies and exploits women, but the fact remains that she has made it to the top in a male-dominated industry and, indeed, a male-dominated culture. She has been the subject of countless academic studies and jargon-packed analyses.

Why has this taboo-breaking provocateur, who enrages conservatives and radicals alike, occupied us for so long?

Succès de scandale

“Here’s what I’ve learned after four decades in music,” she . “If they call you shocking, scandalous, troublesome, problematic, provocative or dangerous, you’re onto something.” Exactly when this dawned on Madonna, I don’t know, but I’m guessing it was June 1986. That was when her track “Papa Don’t Preach” was released in the US and Europe and she realized she was onto something … but what?

”Papa don’t preach, I’m in trouble deep/Papa don’t preach, I’ve been losing sleep/But I made up my mind, I’m keeping my baby,” sang Madonna on a tune that many took to be an endorsement of teenage pregnancy and, as one critic , “a path to permanent poverty.” Groups opposed to abortion interpreted it as a positive, ”pro-life” song.”

It really didn’t matter what they thought: what mattered was that they differed, often violently, and were prepared to create a commotion. Meanwhile, all Madonna would say was: ”To me, it’s a celebration of life.” The controversy blazed on for several months, unwittingly promoting sales and pushing the single to the top of the charts in the UK, UK and several other countries. The album from which it was taken also became a best-seller. (The song was written by Madonna and. View and listen ) 

Mainstream entertainers had studiously avoided discreditable behavior and the disgrace and notoriety—not to mention malicious gossip and all manner of aspersion—that came from shocking the public for decades. Madonna, on the other hand, seemed to take her cues from the Rolling Stones and the Sex Pistols, neither of whom suffered collateral damage from their mischief in the 1960s and 1970s, respectively. 

Madonna emerged without collateral damage, her reputation as social provocateur as well as chanteuse boosted. She appears to have learned a salutary lesson from the “Papa Don’t Preach” episode. Actions that cause general public anger or indignation are precious.

Traditionally, the entertainment industry avoided them. An accusation of sexual assault, although later cleared, annihilated the career of Hollywood star Roscoe Arbuckle all the same; he died penniless in 1933. Mindful of his fate, stars and the studios that employed them were careful to contain any suspicion of scandal. With the exception of Elizabeth Taylor who, in the 1960s, conducted her romance with Richard Burton in public almost theatrically, stars kept as tight a lid as they could on their private lives.

The lesson wasn’t lost on Madonna: do something that upsets, outrages and disgusts some people and gratifies others and they’ll talk about you. And the media will pay attention. It really doesn’t matter if they find you monstrous, just as long as you stay at the fore of their consciousness. Anywhere else and you stand a chance of being ignored and, worse still, forgotten. In show business, the kind of calamities that most people avoid are a valuable resource. Madonna discovered the meaning of succès de scandale and it seems to have hit her like a flash on the road to Damascus. This helps explain why she plunged headfirst into the kind of episodes that had ruined earlier artists.

Shameless

For succeeding decades Madonna seemed, whether by accident or, much more probably, design (and perhaps even fate), to be in a continual state of crisis, not to mention her inflammatory lyrics, demagogic videos, shameless films or risqué book called . Once she found momentum, Madonna never slackened: every new provocation seemed to surpass the previous one.

And all this was happening in that liminal time before the smartphone or social media, but after people had acquired the appetite for salacious gossip and guiltless eavesdropping. Big Brother and other reality TV shows provided a peephole for the audience’s new fascination with the hitherto concealed practices of others.  I wonder what Madonna made of Paris Hilton’s 2003 sex tape, drolly titled 1 Night in Paris. Or Kim Kardashian’s analogous coup de théâtre. The stars of both videos were propelled to the stratosphere, yet neither boasted anything resembling talent, at least not talent in the accepted sense of the word. You could almost hear Madonna think: “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Madonna never quite matched this shamelessness, but remember: she played a colossal role in creating the kind of culture in which it might otherwise have been dismissed as a cheap, vulgar and incendiary stunt rather than a major talking point and, in turn, a launchpad for two epic careers. Sex scandals are now a familiar trope of popular culture, though MeToo issued notice that the consequences can be as destructive as well as productive.

Open access

Today, anyone who aspires to be anybody in the entertainment industry has to enter into a Faustian pact. Like the German necromancer, they’re required to surrender their soul in exchange for whatever they think the world has to offer them. Madonna’s soul wasn’t part of her deal: her privacy was. Even before her 1991 film In Bed With Madonna, she’d been unabashed about sharing intimate details. The movie just confirmed that she offered open access.

An inquisitive media and a probing audience soon got used to this and expected the same cooperation from other entertainers. Those who hesitated didn’t make it, and we know nothing about them. Less inhibited wannabe celebs made it onto one of the alphabetical celebrity lists.

There is little in today’s celebrity-fixated culture that Madonna �󲹲���’t either initiated, essayed or trespassed on in some way. Before tabloids started taking a keen and prurient interest in celebrity couples, Madonna married Sean Penn. That was in August 1985, and, as if to provide the media with a foretaste of the performative aspects of coupledom that were to become familiar, she and Penn staged a Grand Guignol at an outdoor ceremony in Malibu. Paparazzi helicopters circled in search of a shot, while Penn fired a few shots of his own – his from a gun. The marriage imploded after two years.

Madonna endured the unwelcome attention of a who threatened to cut her “ear-to-ear.” She puzzled audiences about her sexual preferences by orchestrating an onstage three-way with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera in 2003. Her 2012 Super Bowl halftime appearance didn’t upstage Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” but she managed to upset many of the 114 million TV viewers when she thrust a “swivel-on-it” finger at the camera. She was 53 at the time: “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale.” Comparisons with Cleopatra are not baseless: they both remained fascinatingly attractive, not so much for their beauty but for their unpredictability. 

Mother to the generations

The term “postfeminism” wasn’t invented for Madonna, but it could have been. Her spirit of independence is an entrepreneurial rather than recalcitrant or rebellious spirit. Among the resources she’s traded is her sexiness. Note: not sex, but sexiness—the quality of being sexually attractive or exciting.  Wearing outfits that could have been taken from the clothes rack of a porn studio, simulating sex acts during concerts and portraying a variety of coquettish roles over a theatrically chameleonic career have not won her fans among first-wave feminists.

But Madonna became a mother to the generations. Over the decades, Madonna has flouted gender protocol, but, according to some, in a way that secretes a sneaky reactionism. If there is a theme running through her career it’s that she can do as she pleases, even—or especially—if her behavior upsets other women. Hers is a highly individualized approach to getting whatever she wants without necessarily considering the interests of other women. That makes her either a steely-willed, ruthless maverick prepared to trample on others, regardless of their gender, or a playful sexbot. Of course, she doesn’t see it like this. “I am happy to do the trailblazing so that all the women behind me can have an easier time in the years to come,” she in an Instagram post earlier this year.

“Shocking, scandalous, troublesome, problematic, provocative … dangerous.” Madonna has been all these things. She probably won’t be again. Who can say? Having changed culture in the 20th century, her influence endures. And, as she recognizes, she’s still onto something. 

[Routledge publishes Ellis Cashmore’s , 3rd Edition next month.]
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This quote captures the essence of the renowned filmmaker’s life and work, which spanned five decades, three continents, three languages, and encompassed every imaginable genre. Despite such diversity, a Buñuel film was always distinctive and easily recognizable. As Ingmar Bergman aptly put it, “Buñuel almost always made Buñuel films.”

Born into a wealthy Spanish family on February 22, 1900, Luis Buñuel Portolés received a strict Jesuit education and grew up in a deeply religious environment. However, he became disillusioned with the hypocrisy and cultural influence of organized religion, ultimately dedicating his life to challenging the church, state and established social order. Buñuel believed that the external veneer of so-called polite society stifled natural human desires, leading to societal dysfunction.

Being acutely aware of the ironies of satirizing his own class, Buñuel possessed an intimate understanding of the neuroses associated with a middle-class Catholic upbringing. When asked about his religious beliefs, he famously replied, “I am still an atheist, thank God.” While he didn’t outright reject the idea of divinity, he delighted in subverting the associated tropes.

A young artist in Paris

Buñuel’s formal education began at the University of Madrid in 1917, where he studied philosophy. It was there that he developed close relationships with poet and playwright Federico García Lorca and painter Salvador Dalí, friendships that profoundly influenced his life and work.

About his eccentric friend Dalí, Buñuel said, “Salvador Dalí seduced many ladies, particularly American ladies, but these seductions usually consisted of stripping them naked in his apartment, frying a couple of eggs, putting them on the woman’s shoulders and, without a word, showing them the door.”

After his father’s death in 1925, Buñuel moved to Paris, where he became an assistant to director Jean Epstein. This apprenticeship led him to collaborate with Salvador Dalí on their iconic 1929 silent film, Un chien andalou (“An Andalusian Dog”). The film catapulted them into the forefront of the burgeoning French surrealist movement led by poet André Breton.

Un chien andalou, written in just six days at Dalí’s home and financed by Buñuel’s mother, featured a series of startling, Freudian-inspired images, including the infamous scene of a woman’s eyeball being sliced open with a blade. The film aimed to shock and insult the intellectual bourgeoisie of Buñuel’s youth. He even carried stones in his pockets, anticipating hecklers at the premiere.

“Our only rule was simple: we would not accept any idea or image that could be rationally explained. We had to embrace the irrational and keep only the images that surprised us, without attempting to provide an explanation,” Buñuel wrote in his autobiography.

Ironically, Un chien andalou was well-received by the very bourgeois audience it aimed to challenge. Determined not to repeat this outcome, Buñuel sought to create a film that would truly provoke. The 1930 film, L’age d’or (“T��� Golden Age”), turned out to be even more controversial than anticipated.

The film opens with a documentary about scorpions and proceeds with a series of vignettes depicting a couple’s constant thwarted attempts to consummate their relationship due to the hypocrisy and double standards of family, church and society.

During the premiere, fascist groups seized control of the theater, hurling ink at the screen, tearing up seats, throwing bombs and vandalizing the adjacent art gallery. The police banned the film “in the name of public order,” and the Vatican threatened excommunication for the blasphemous final scene that visually linked Jesus Christ with the erotic writings of the Marquis de Sade. L’age d’or was withdrawn from circulation and remained unseen until 1979.

For his next project, the surrealist documentary Las Hurdes (1933), Buñuel returned to Spain. The film focused on the lives of peasants in Extremadura, one of the country’s poorest regions. By adopting a voyeuristic style, Buñuel aimed to discomfort viewers by making them complicit in the depiction of the locals’ pathetic living conditions. The film was known for its disorienting combination of commentary, music and visuals. It faced bans from three consecutive Republican administrations and remained prohibited thereafter.

During the tumultuous period of the Spanish Civil War and World War II (1934-1946), Buñuel worked at Filmófono, a commercial film studio in Spain, before an unproductive stint in Hollywood. He later served as an artistic director at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The execution of his close friend, Federico García Lorca, at the beginning of the Spanish war deeply impacted Buñuel and stayed with him for the remainder of his life.

Buñuel finds a new home in Mexico

In search of new opportunities, Buñuel moved to Mexico in 1946 with his family. His first major success in Mexico came with the 1949 film El gran Calavera (“T��� Great Madcap”), a hilarious satire of the Mexican nouveau riche that delves into mistaken identities, sham marriages and misfired suicides. A year later, Buñuel renounced his Spanish citizenship and became a naturalized Mexican.

Seeking inspiration, Buñuel frequently ventured into the shanties and ghettos of Mexico City. During one such expedition, he came across the story of a 12-year-old boy found dead at a garbage dump, which became the basis for his next film, Los olvidados (1950), dubbed The Young and the Damned in English. The film, which won the Best Director prize at Cannes, was perceived at the time as an insult to Mexican sensibilities. There were even calls to revoke Buñuel’s Mexican citizenship.

Los Olvidados tells the story of a gang of street children who wreak havoc in their impoverished community, brutalizing a blind beggar and assaulting a crippled individual. Film historian Carl J. Mora noted that Buñuel presented poverty in a radically different way from traditional Mexican melodramas. The street children are not romanticized heroes struggling for survival but ruthless predators no better than their victims.

Buñuel made 20 films in Mexico, most of which conformed to the generic conventions of the studio system. However, some films like É�� and ����������í�� pushed boundaries and showcased flashes of the irreverent style for which he was known.

É�� (called “This Strange Passion” in the US) presents a detached and unsentimental portrait of an affluent Mexican man driven by jealousy to threaten to sew his wife’s vagina shut. The film explores power dynamics between the husband and wife, ultimately questioning the validity of his suspicions. Buñuel described his fascination with the character, saying, “I was moved by this man with so much jealousy, so much internal loneliness and anxiety, and so much external violence. I studied him like an insect.”

In 1954, Buñuel directed his first color film and American production, The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, financed by United Artists and produced by George Pepper. The film was followed by The Young One (1960), his second and final American production, based on a short story by Peter Mathieson. It portrays a black man accused of rape who seeks refuge on a remote island, only to encounter a racist gamekeeper. The film explores themes of racism and desire, receiving critical acclaim but also harsh criticism from US audiences.

Two trilogies mark a mature career

In the mid-1950s, Buñuel returned to France to work on international co-productions. During this period, he created what has been called the “revolutionary triptych” with films like Cela s’appelle l’aurore (“This is Called Dawn”), La mort en ce jardin (“Death in the Garden”) and La fièvre monte à El Pao (“Fever Mounts at El Pao”). Each film explicitly or implicitly explores armed revolution against right-wing dictatorships.

In 1960, Buñuel returned to Spain, where he received support from a group of financiers, including Mexican movie star Silvia Pinal and her producer and husband, Gustavo Alatriste. Their collaboration led to the creation of Viridiana, based on a preliminary screenplay written by Buñuel and Julio Alejandro. 

The film centers around a nun named Viridiana, who struggles to uphold her Catholic principles when confronted with the lecherous desires of her uncle and a group of paupers and reprobates. Viridiana caused a massive controversy due to its explicit scenes of rape, incest, necrophilia and animal cruelty, as well as its sacrilegious re-enactment of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper.

Despite the Vatican’s condemnation of Viridiana as an attack on Catholicism and Christianity, the film won the Palme d’or at Cannes. The notoriety thrust Buñuel back into the spotlight and marked the beginning of his fruitful collaboration with actor Fernando Rey, often considered his alter ego.

Buñuel continued to find support for his films after the success of Viridiana. He went on to make two more films in Mexico with Pinal and Alatriste: The Exterminating Angel (1962) and Simon of the Desert (1965). Together with Viridiana, these films are often referred to as the “Buñuelian trilogy.”

The Exterminating Angel satirizes the fears and fantasies of the landed gentry through a group of dinner guests who find themselves unable to leave after a banquet. Trapped in their own bourgeois world, they become increasingly resentful, revealing their worst tendencies.

In Simon of the Desert, the devil tempts a saint by assuming the form of a bare-breasted girl singing and flaunting her legs. The saint eventually abandons his ascetic life to embrace the pleasures of a jazz club.

Leaving behind a legacy

The term “Buñuelian” has come to signify dark, often morbid humor that highlights the absurdities of everyday life. It involves juxtaposing the mundane with the irrational, blurring the boundaries between dreams and reality. Buñuel’s films often feature incongruous imagery, such as farm animals in bourgeois settings, cannibalistic animals and fetishistic shots of feet and legs. In his world, politics and sexuality are inextricably intertwined, exposing the interplay between power, the suppression of desires and freedom.

Insects also feature prominently in many of Buñuel’s films, serving as a recurring theme. Examples include the death’s head hawkmoth in Un chien andalou, the scorpions in L’age d’or, and the framed tarantula in Phantom of Liberty (1974).

Buñuel’s partnership with producer Serge Silberman marked a new phase in his career. Silberman, a Polish émigré in Paris, had previously worked with several renowned directors. Their collaboration began with the 1964 film Diary of a Chambermaid, based on Octave Mirbeau’s 1900 novel. The film was known for its candid and bold depiction of sexual perversions, a subject that fascinated Buñuel. The young writer Jean-Claude Carrière was brought on board to work on the film, and he would go on to co-write 10 scripts with Buñuel.

The casting of actress Jeanne Moreau in Diary of a Chambermaid was influenced by her mannerisms and body language, reflecting how she walked, ate and carried herself in both public and private settings. Moreau portrayed Célestine, a chambermaid in an upper-class French household who becomes the object of desire for both the father and son of the family. The film slyly acknowledged the repressed desires and voyeuristic tendencies of middle-class audiences.

The pair’s next collaboration, Belle de Jour (1967), was adapted from Joseph Kessel’s 1928 novel. Catherine Deneuve portrayed Séverine, an affluent housewife trapped in a sexless marriage. To awaken her dormant sexuality, she becomes a part-time prostitute. However, her involvement with a young gangster named Marcel leads to the unraveling of her carefully constructed social façade. Buñuel and Carriere reportedly interviewed dozens of prostitutes in Madrid as research for the film. Belle de Jour became Buñuel’s most commercially successful film.

Deneuve also starred in Tristana (1970), a morbid romance depicting the relationship between an aging pederast and the woman he adopts, mistreats and eventually loses. After having her leg amputated, she returns to him seeking support and revenge. Critic Roger Ebert commented on the film, saying, “A few great directors have the ability to draw us into their dream world, into their personalities and obsessions, and fascinate us for a short time. This is the highest level of escapism that movies can provide.”

Among Buñuel’s notable French works, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) stands out. It revolves around a group of wealthy companions who are repeatedly frustrated in their attempts to enjoy a meal together. Through dream sequences, the film delves into their intense fears, including public shame, arrest by authorities and execution by firing squad. Buñuel cleverly employs nested dream sequences, challenging viewers’ efforts to make sense of the narrative.

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but Buñuel scorned the accolade, derisively referred to it as the verdict of “2,500 idiots.” The success, though, allowed the 74-year-old director to make The Phantom of Liberty, a film considered quintessentially Buñuelian.

Buñuel and Carriere wrote the script for The Phantom of Liberty by recounting their dreams to each other every morning. Watching the film feels akin to attempting to comprehend a strange dream as it fades into the murky depths of the subconscious. It tackles subjects such as incest, mass murder, sadomasochism, fetishism and pedophilia. The film’s anti-narrative structure combines Buñuel’s satirical humour with increasingly bizarre and outlandish vignettes, challenging viewers’ preconceived notions of reality.

The politically charged film appears eerily prophetic in its voyeuristic and sensational treatment of terrorists and mass murderers. It also foreshadows the impending destruction of the world through humanity’s own foolish and self-destructive desecration of the natural environment.

Buñuel’s final film, That Obscure Object of Desire (1977), adapted from an 1898 Pierre Louÿs novel, unfolds through a series of flashbacks. Aging Frenchman Mathieu reminisces about his tumultuous relationship with Conchita, a seductive 19-year-old Flamenco dancer played by two different actresses, Carole Bouquet and Ángela Molina. Each actress possesses a distinct on-screen persona. Conchita plays a twisted, erotic game, tormenting Mathieu with intimacy while denying him what he truly desires.

Luis Buñuel passed away at the age of 84 in 1983, with his wife and long-time collaborator Jean-Claude Carrière at his side. Contrary to expectations, he chose Mexico as his final resting place, spending his last weeks discussing theology with a Catholic priest—a symbolic act for a man who had relentlessly criticized the institution throughout his life.

Buñuel summarized his perspective on the world and his place within it by stating, “Somewhere between chance and mystery lies imagination, the only thing that protects our freedom, despite people’s attempts to diminish or eradicate it altogether.”
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A cultural divide

There are aspects to the case that are mostly personal in nature, but it also raised questions about the Norwegian authorities’ right to intervene and scrutinize immigrant parents for raising their children according to the parents’ native culture. 

For example, though it’s normal for Indian parents to feed their children with their hands or sleep with them in the same bed, such practices may be stigmatized in Scandinavia because they are believed to compromise the autonomy and safety of children. 

The Norwegian Ambassador to India, Hans Jacob Frydenlund, the movie, saying that a mother’s love in Norway was no different than in India. According to Frydenlund, cultural differences such as these would not amount to such an escalation that would cause children to be taken away from their biological parents.

Whatever the truth, there are examples from the movie that stand out. These include a scene where Debika and her husband visit their children after they have been taken away and placed in state custody. Debika runs to hug her toddlers, crying her eyes out, but the public official assigned to their case asks her not to do so, lest the child build an emotional bond with her. The implicit assumption is that once the child has been taken away by child services, he or she is as good as an object until placed in the care of guardians approved by the government. 

When the parents visit the children after they have been placed with a Norwegian couple, their son fails to acknowledge his biological father. 

While the intention of saving children from potentially unstable parents is noble, it merits serious consideration to ask if this Scandinavian project of rupturing biological families and building artificial ones in their place is conscionable or can create kind and compassionate human adults. Even if one truly believes in such modernized social engineering, must it not be carried out with utmost care—not like the botched-up job that was given to the Chakrabortys?

Individualistic “modernity”

This adoption process isn’t as modern as Scandinavians might believe. The reason lies in Scandinavian beliefs and values.

Michael Booth, British journalist and author of The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind The Myth of Scandinavian Utopia, writes about the increasing discomfort towards immigrants in the country, most notably evident in the 2011 terrorist attack by Anders Breivik. He outlines several complexities in how immigrants from Africa and Asia, often Muslims, are perceived and, more importantly, how these complexities shape the political discourse in the Scandinavian countries. 

He quotes several experts from different countries, including Norway, who remark that most immigrants would have been able to integrate better had they arrived in the 1950s, i.e., “before we became so egalitarian and individualistic.”

But who defines what is truly egalitarian and individualistic? Let’s look at what Booth writes of the Swedish worldview of modernity:

Swedes were encouraged to cast off their old ways and move as one towards the light. If something was deemed modern, it was good. A rational, enlightened country such as Sweden had no need for folklore and buckled shoes, for rituals and community customs. Trade unions were modern. Collectivism was modern. Neutrality was modern. Economic and gender equality was modern. Universal suffrage was modern. Divorce was modern. The welfare state was modern. Eventually, multiculturalism and mass immigration were deemed modern.

To achieve this, Sweden resorted to a host of measures. In the post-World War II era, it maintained neutrality in the face of conflicts between its neighbors while also becoming one of the biggest arms manufacturers in the world.

A Swede whom Booth quotes in his book points out that Sweden was also set up differently. It was the state’s goal that everyone should be self-sufficient by the time they turn 18 and should not be dependent on their family.

“In Sweden, self-sufficiency and autonomy is all; debt of any kind, be it emotional, a favor, or cash, is to be avoided at all cost,” Booth adds.

In the Swedish worldview, the goal of life, then, is to maximize one’s individual autonomy, which is ensured by the state in the form of free healthcare, education and state-of-the-art infrastructure, in exchange for higher taxes. 

In other words, it was the vision of Swedish leaders that one shouldn’t have to depend on anyone except the state in what seems like a purely transactional relationship. What this shows is a glaring misunderstanding of human character and relationships.

While the state may provide for all of one’s material needs, one’s emotional needs are fulfilled by their biological and communal bonds. In Scandinavia, the idea is not merely to save children from harmful domestic environments but to eliminate the idea of mutual dependency, accountability, and bonding within a family unit. 

To do so at a societal level feels counterintuitive, especially for a country that seeks to encourage multiculturalism. How is one supposed to respect and make space for someone of a different culture, religion or language if they haven’t learned to do that for their family or community members?

What is normal in Northern Europe can be bizarre to the world

It is no wonder, then, that when #swedengate hit on Twitter last year, many Swedes were taken aback by how the world judged them. It started when a user posted about how, if you are a child hanging out at your friend’s place and it’s time for the family’s dinner, you will not be asked to join the dinner.

Many Swedes the practice as part of their culture. However, children of immigrants in Sweden pitched into the conversation, saying that they too had found it strange growing up.

People from the rest of the world responded that they would never let their guests go hungry. In fact, many people from countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East even said their families would feed their guests too much in a show of their warmth and hospitality. 

As trivial as this example is, it does show how an over-emphasis on individual autonomy can make human beings self-centered and self-absorbed to the point of being ridiculous. No responsible state should overlook that building interpersonal relationships right from childhood helps us navigate a multitude of varying social contexts as per our internal emotional needs and is vital for our survival. 

The Scandinavian ideal of modernity is often foisted on the rest of the world as something to aspire to. Should that be so? To take nothing away from Scandinavia’s success, it behooves us to inspect its utopian zeal more closely in our yearning to be modern.

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What makes me so sure? Well, name one disaster that �󲹲���’t been transformed into popular entertainment. The films are typically respectful, often thoughtful, and as deferential as possible to relatives. That doesn’t detract from the fact that they are made to entertain rather than educate us, inform us or change our attitudes. Unpalatable as it is to accept, we find real-life catastrophe enjoyable.

Welcome to the Curiosity Economy

Turnaround times are getting faster

The Titan vessel went missing in a remote area of the North Atlantic on Sunday with four days’ supply of oxygen for its crew of five. The intention was to descend to the wreck of the iconic British passenger liner Titanic, the largest ship in the world at the time it was built and supposedly “unsinkable.” That ship struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage in April 1912 and sank to the bottom, ending 1,490 lives. The Titan voyagers, gawkers themselves, were supposed to inspect the hulk of the sunken ship. The fact that there is even a market for this kind of venture suggests how fascinated we are by cataclysms.

The Titanic tragedy became the subject of many motion pictures, James Cameron’s Oscar-winning 1997 blockbuster being the best known. Talking pictures were not around at the time of the real tragedy, and it wouldn’t be until 1953 when 20th Century Fox put out ’s Titanic that viewers packed cinemas to be permitted to peer guiltlessly at a tragedy that remains one of our favorites to this day. Forty-one years was considered a suitably long period, and there was no agonizing over the timing. After all, the intervening period had witnessed two world wars, both of which had been dramatized in various ways by the early 1950s and continue to occupy filmmakers and audiences (of course).

Bombshell: The Life and Death of Anna Nicole Smith

Nowadays, the period of respect has been compressed. The Chernobyl explosion of 1986 was made into a horror film called Chernobyl Diaries in 2012, though the more recognizable HBO series Chernobyl did not reach television screens until 2019, 33 years after the nuclear meltdown. Even that seems an excessively long time by today’s standards. More typical is Patriots Day, a 2016 film structured around the Boston Marathon bombings of 2013 that claimed three lives. Or Deepwater, a 2016 film based on the 2010 human and environmental disaster in which eleven people died.

We are all OceanGate

Does this suggest that we, as an audience, are becoming less respectful and sensitive? Or perhaps we are more genuinely interested in gaining a nuanced, empathic, comprehensive and more deeply insightful perspective than we are able to get through news outlets? Certainly, audiences are ready almost instantly. Maybe if talkies were around in the early twentieth century, cinemagoers would have jumped at the opportunity to witness the Titanic tragedy, albeit as paying onlookers. I doubt it, though. I think the historical context would have prohibited this.

I wasn’t around at the time, but my knowledge of the culture of the period tells me there would have been resistance. The intervening global conflicts changed audience sensibilities: by 1953, the public was inured to bloodshed and colossal loss of life. They’d watched newsreels, probably through parted fingers, and assimilated the prolonged trauma of persistent deaths, week after horrible week. Viewing a work of art based on a tragedy may once have been vulgar, uncivil and lacking in compassion. Not after the Second World War. Scars faded much more quickly.

The Death of One Man Is a Tragedy

Today, they seem to take no time at all to fade. No sooner do we learn of a disaster through our newspapers than a movie debuts. The attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, seemed to be such an extraordinarily enormous tragedy, with such far-reaching consequences, that filmmakers would have trodden gently. Not so: multiple dramatizations lept forth, including director Paul Greengrass’s recreation in real time, collating what was known of its flight path, communications with air traffic control, phone conversation of passengers and interviews with the families of the flight crew and passengers. was released within five years, in 2006.

I doubt that we will have to wait five years to see an artistic impression of what went on inside the Titan. It is grim trying to imagine it, but scriptwriters, directors and actors will do exactly that. Maybe they’re already doing so. As I write, reports of the grotesque misadventure of the Titan are filtering through and it seems unthinkable that any human would contemplate exploiting the tragic events, even for art’s sake. But they will. And it will not be long before you, reader, are watching the film.

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Crime, intrigue, and journalism

Five months before the arrest, Dey had been shot to death by unidentified assailants. Because Vora and Dey both reported about the underworld (most notably on Dawood Ibrahim and Chota Rajan) the case quickly became a very high-profile one enveloping top cops, journalists, and India’s most wanted criminals. Vora was charged under the dreaded MCOCA, i.e. the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, and was jailed for nine months. She had to fight a seven-year-long legal battle to clear her name and be acquitted of the charges. In 2019, she published an account of her experience, The Bars in Byculla: My Days in Prison. 

Directed by Hansal Mehta, Scoop is a riveting watch with stellar performances by Karishma Tanna, Harman Baweja, and Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub. The names of their characters are changed, but they play Vora, Himanshu Roy and S. Hussain Zaidi, respectively. At the time of this case, Vora was the deputy bureau chief of Asian Age, where Zaidi was her editor and mentor. Roy was the Joint Commissioner of Police in Mumbai at the time, and died by suicide in 2018.

The three actors, each essaying a complicated and significant part, play their roles with equal parts subtlety and urgency, just what their characters require. The show moves along slowly, but consistently reveals a deeper and more intricate web between the police, underworld, and crime reporting in Mumbai. If you don’t pay attention, it can be difficult to tell who is working for whom and why. 

What is a journalist’s mission?

The central character at the heart of the conflict, Jaideb Sen, is a veteran of crime reporting who is believed to be close to Dawood and sometimes publishes stories against Rajan. Jagruti Pathak, Tanna’s character, manages to get a phone interview with Rajan—in full view of her entire newsroom—and is ultimately nailed for this as supposed evidence of her links with the underworld and role in Sen’s murder. What a layperson may easily miss here is that journalism, especially crime reporting such as this, is essentially all about access. If you have the access, you have the scoop. And if you want to write about the most wanted gangsters, you need to be close to them and their aides. In this case, what does a journalist actually do and how do you make sure that their intentions are not compromised?

Bombshell: The Life and Death of Anna Nicole Smith

This is where Ayyub’s character, named Imran in the series and representing the phenomenal journalist and author Zaidi, becomes important. The journalist is known for his reporting on Dawood Ibrahim—indeed, a joke on the show is how badly he wants to see Ibrahim caught and put behind bars. He published his book, Dongri To Dubai: Six Decades of Mumbai Mafia, in 2012. In the show, it is Imran who never loses sight of what he and his colleagues are doing: reporting about crime to inform the public, rather than making front-page bylines and getting kickbacks for mouthpiece articles. Imran is the anchor that often restrains the highly ambitious Pathak in her never-ending quest for fame, without compromising her ability to get verified and fact-checked exclusive scoops. Sen, also mentored by Imran, works for a rival newspaper, and the rivalries of gangsters reflect the professional rivalries of the two reporters as well. So, when he uncovers something deeply disturbing, he asks Pathak to stop digging and stay away. But Pathak receives it as a threat rather than a warning.

It is in the last episode that the story truly comes together. While talking to a fellow inmate, Pathak recounts this exchange with Sen and goes into what drives such journalists: the adrenaline rush of mingling with high-profile people, the fame, and the power. Her monologue is poignant for what the case did to her not only as a journalist but also as a single mother and a woman. She remarks that all of the influential people she brushed against, whether a police officer or an influential inmate, functioned in essentially the same way. Their ego and power helped her get ahead, but, when push came to shove, she was also crushed under their weight when it suited their objectives. From a star journalist to an accused murderer, she is humbled (and broken) to the point of criticizing her own journalism.

But outside Pathak’s arc, the show raises several important questions. What truly is journalism, for one? Is it about protecting the business interests of media houses, or informing the public? The two can often be at odds. If it is the first, to what extent must a journalist go to get a scoop? If it is about the public, does the fraternity of journalists have the wherewithal to stand by individual reporters in a collective show of upholding truth at great cost? Both Sen and Pathak are subjected to intense character assassinations by their own colleagues and peers. Pathak is accused of illicit relationships with her editor, top cop Shroff (Baweja’s character), and even labeled Rajan’s girlfriend which also gets her targeted by inmates in prison. The implicit assumption is, “How could a woman ever get anywhere in life, if not for men showering undue attention on her in return for romantic or sexual favors?” Her ambition may have made her a bit reckless, but in their schadenfreude and self-interest, most of her fraternity members conveniently forget the endless hours she put into her work, sacrificing her family and personal life, and her ingenuity and patience in getting the intel that helped her rise in her career.

It is not something that she is subjected to only by men, but also by women. Pathak’s rivals who were also women did not pull punches in contributing to her trial. A female intern she was mentoring at the time of her arrest actively turned against and used her to build a career for herself. Played by Inayat Sood, Deepa tries to mimic Pathak in her ambition and drive but with none of her ethics and judgment. In one scene, she even remarks about how boring print media can be and that she’d like to be in broadcast media because they understand that news is “entertainment.” On the other hand, one of Pathak’s main rivals as an inmate turns out to be a woman she had reported on years ago, Rambha Ma. The woman had killed off her husband with the help of her boyfriend and was in jail for the same. She lords it over her fellow female inmates and, when Pathak shows up, leaves no stone unturned in making her life worse. From making sure she cannot eat, bathe, or spend her time in peace while in jail, Rambha Ma subjects Pathak to a personal vendetta for her journalism too.

Caught in a system

While in jail, Pathak also realizes that many inmates are there mostly because of a lack of information. In one instance, she remarks that judges should visit the premises and see how inmates live without basic human dignity. It isn’t just she who is innocent, but many others, except they had none of her will to fight the case, her awareness of laws and court procedures, family and community support, or, finally, good lawyers.

The show also tugs at the deep nexus between the Mumbai Police and the gangsters which it claims it wants to nab at all costs. Pathak was used as a convenient distraction in an effort to toss away Sen’s murder case due to a lack of real evidence as well as the protection of certain top cops. In this view, the work of a journalist becomes even more important and fraught with dangers, requiring more and more protection and support not just from the media fraternity but various stakeholders in the state as well.

India’s Police: An Instrument of Injustice

That Pathak (like Jigna Vora herself) is eventually acquitted is a testament to the adage that truth alone triumphs—even though in its march to victory it can sometimes fall prey to the selfish interests of the very people that seek to fight for it. Scoop is a must-watch both for its compelling portrayal of a real-life story and for the questions it raises.

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An instant star

Born as Vickie Lynn Hogan in 1967, this Texan beauty had her first taste of the spotlight as a pole dancer at a local strip club, rapidly becoming the town’s hottest performer.

When she was only 16, she dropped out of high school and married Billy Wayne Smith, a blue-collar construction worker. The couple soon welcomed a son named Daniel Wayne, but Anna Nicole’s dissatisfaction with the marriage led her to leave at the young age of 20, seeking solace and opportunities in the sprawling city of Los Angeles.

It was in Los Angeles that Anna Nicole’s star began to rise rapidly. As she graced the covers of Playboy magazine and became the face of Guess jeans, the world took notice of her irresistible charm. With a body that seemed to defy nature and a pout that could melt icebergs, Anna Nicole embodied seduction, wrapped in curves and enhanced by silicone. Her meteoric ascent from a clothing model to an iconic Playboy Playmate showcased her unwavering determination to conquer the fiercely competitive entertainment industry, fearlessly using her sex appeal as a powerful weapon.

Gone in a flash

Despite the dazzling lights and  ascendant fame, it was Smith’s controversial marriage to the billionaire oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II that would ultimately lead to her downfall. In 1994, at the age of 26, she married the 89-year-old Marshall, igniting a firestorm of speculation. Critics questioned her motives, labeling her a gold digger, while others doubted the authenticity of their relationship. But as they say, love knows no boundaries.

After Marshall’s death in 1995, Smith was drawn into a legal labyrinth. While his will didn’t grant her a substantial inheritance, she fought fiercely to prove her entitlement to a share, worth hundreds of millions, of his vast estate. The ensuing legal battles turned courtrooms across the nation into dramatic arenas, with Smith claiming that Marshall had promised her a rightful portion and accusing his son, E. Pierce Marshall, of manipulating the will to exclude her.

However, Smith’s tenacity faced legal setbacks. In 2000, a jury initially awarded her an astonishing $474 million, only for the decision to be overturned later. The case eventually reached the Supreme Court, where in 2006, the final ruling dashed her hopes of obtaining any part of Marshall’s estate.

While these relentless courtroom clashes dominated the media’s attention, Smith suffered a devastating blow in the untimely death of her son, Daniel Wayne Smith, in 2006. Born from her first marriage, Daniel accompanied his mother to the hospital for the birth of his half-sister, Dannielynn. Tragically, just three days later, Daniel’s life was cut short by an accidental drug overdose, sending shockwaves of grief through Smith’s world.

Why do we hurt the ones we admire?

Macfarlane’s directing skillfully incorporates captivating archival footage, taking us on a journey through Smith’s formative years in a challenging American upbringing, her instant popularity as a Texas stripper, her fascinating relationship with J. Howard Marshall, her time as a Guess girl, and her subsequent role as a Playboy Playmate. We are intimately exposed to her complex inner world and turbulent psyche through these powerful visuals.

The media’s relentless obsession with Smith’s life and relationships became a toxic force in her existence. Like a couple locked in a dysfunctional relationship, she and the media couldn’t keep their hands off each other, even though they knew the tragic fate that awaited them. From the moment she burst onto the scene, the media voraciously devoured her every move. Her bombshell persona and the scandalous stories that surrounded her became irresistible material for headlines and gossip columns. And she knew exactly how to play the game, skilfully manipulating camera angles and teasing the press with tantalizing tidbits that left them craving more.

It was a symbiotic relationship built on toxicity. Smith craved attention and adoration, and the media willingly indulged her desires. The result was an insatiable cycle of headlines, paparazzi snapshots, and scandalous rumors. Tragically, this insatiable thirst for attention eventually consumed her. The invasive cameras, constant scrutiny, and unrelenting pressure took a toll on her mental health. She transformed into a caricature of herself, a prisoner of the spotlight, with the media circling like vultures, eagerly awaiting their next feast. And there was plenty to feast upon, including her struggles with prescription drug addiction and visible mental health issues.

Why Fame Can Be a Nightmare

As her life spiraled out of control, the media reveled in the spectacle. Every misstep, every struggle became a sensationalized soap opera, eagerly devoured by the masses. Smith’s downfall became a morbid reality show, where her pain became profit for a callous industry. It was a dark dance, a sickening game, and both sides played their parts until there was nothing left.

In 2007, at the age of 39, Smith tragically succumbed to an accidental overdose of prescription drugs, marking a devastating end to a life lived in the tumultuous limelight. 

So, let us raise a glass to Anna Nicole, a fallen star who blazed across the sky with intensity, only to crash and burn in an inferno of chaos. Her legacy serves as a poignant reminder that even the most glamorous icons can become casualties of a world that both idolizes and devours them. As the dust settles from her existence, we are left to contemplate our own complicity in the media’s insatiable appetite for scandal, and the tragic toll it exacts on those caught in its clutches.

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The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939, in Nutbush, Tennessee, Tina Turner rose to prominence in the 1960s as the lead vocalist of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. The duo’s energetic live performances and their chart-topping hits such as “River Deep – Mountain High” and “Proud Mary”made them a force to be reckoned with. Tina’s raw talent and boundless energy on stage earned her the title of the “Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

However, it was during her solo career that Tina Turner truly soared to new heights. In the 1980s, she released her landmark album “Private Dancer,” which featured the unforgettable singles “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” “Private Dancer,”and “Better Be Good to Me.”. This Grammy-winning album showcased her raw talent. Songs like “Simply the Best,” “We Don’t Need Another Hero,” and “Steamy Windows”became anthems for fans worldwide, and her live shows sold out stadiums across the globe..

Her marriage to Ike Turner, which ended in divorce in 1978, was marked by turbulent times and personal struggles. However, Tina overcame these challenges and was soon back in the saddle again. Her musical repertoire, informed by her traumatic marriage, was replete with themes of grief, betrayal and rising up from the ashes like a phoenix. Her , “I, Tina,” later adapted into the film “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” served as a testament to her indomitable spirit and became an inspiration to many.

Life without Ike

Tina’s career continued to flourish with subsequent albums like “Break Every Rule” (1986) and “Foreign Affair” (1989).Her collaboration with Bryan Adams on the hit song “It’s Only Love” further solidified her status as a global sensation.

Many of Turner’s songs explore the complexities of love and relationships. She delves into themes of passion, heartbreak, desire, and devotion. Songs like “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” “Private Dancer,” and “I Don’t Wanna Fight” examine the ups and downs of romantic connections and the struggles of maintaining them. Her music frequently touches upon the desire for freedom and independence. Tracks like “River Deep – Mountain High,” “Nutbush City Limits,”and “We Don’t Need Another Hero” reflect a longing for liberation from oppressive situations, or personal limitations.

And who can forget her in the cult film, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdrome, in which she co-starred with Mel Gibson as the chain-mail wearing ‘Aunty Entity’, the queen of a post-apocalyptic township named Bartertown. With this iconic role, she redefined the place of a leading woman in a major Hollywood production way back in 1985 when such characterizations were virtually unheard of.

In 1995 she performed the song “GoldenEye” written by Irish musicians Bono and the Edge. The song served as the theme for the James Bond film GoldenEye.

Tina Turner moved to Europe in the mid-1980s. After a successful career in the United States, she met her future husband, a man who was 16 years her junior, the German music executive Erwin Bach, and subsequently settled in Switzerland. She officially became a Swiss citizen in 2013 after residing in the country for many years. Her move to Europe allowed her to enjoy a quieter personal life and also marked a significant phase in her music career. Turner found considerable success and popularity in Europe, particularly during the 1980s and 1990s.

Buddhist enlightenment

Turner publicly announced her conversion to Buddhism in the early 1990s, following a trip to Japan where she encountered the teachings of Nichiren Buddhism. She had openly spoken about how her Buddhist practice served as a source of strength and resilience for her throughout her life. She credited the practice of chanting and studying Buddhist teachings with helping her overcome personal struggles and find inner peace.

Tina’s contributions to the music industry were recognized with numerous accolades throughout her career. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, received 12 Grammy awards, and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Having sold over 100 million records worldwide, she became one of the highest selling artists of all time.   

When Angela Bassett, who played Turner in the 1993 biopic “What’s Love Got To Do With It”, heard about her demise, aloud: “How do we say farewell to a woman who owned her pain and trauma and used it as a means to help change the world?”Bassett said that “through her courage in telling her story, her commitment to stay the course in her life, no matter the sacrifice, and her determination to carve out a space in rock and roll for herself and for others who look like her, Tina Turner showed others who lived in fear what a beautiful future filled with love, compassion and freedom should look like.”

She is, and always will be, the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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House of Cards ran for a total of six seasons. The series, created by Beau Willimon, premiered on February 1, 2013, and concluded with its final season, released on November 2, 2018. Over the course of its run, House of Cards garnered several awards, critical accolades and a dedicated fan base, establishing itself as one of the flagship shows of the streaming service Netflix. 

The show begins with Underwood, a Democratic congressman from South Carolina, being passed over for a coveted position in the new presidential administration. Fueled by a burning desire for power and revenge, Underwood sets out on a treacherous path to achieve his ambitions.

Hell Hath no Fury Like a Congressman Scorned

With the help of his equally formidable wife, Claire Underwood, Frank concocts intricate schemes to manipulate and destroy his adversaries, which include the sitting president. He employs a wide array of tactics, including bribery, blackmail, and manipulation of public opinion, to ascend the political ladder. Along the way, he forms strategic alliances with influential figures, builds a network of loyal supporters, and orchestrates calculated betrayals to ensure his rise to power.

As the series progresses, Frank Underwood’s Machiavellian tactics lead him to become vice president of the United States and, eventually, president. However, his ascent to the highest office in the land comes with its own set of challenges and moral dilemmas. Underwood must confront the consequences of his actions, face threats from within and outside his administration, and navigate the intricate web of political intrigue that surrounds him. He will stop at nothing to achieve his goals, including murder.

Spacey’s depiction of Frank Underwood is a marvel of subtlety and calculated charisma. From the moment he steps onto the screen, Spacey commands our attention with his piercing gaze and sly, smirking grin. Underwood’s Southern drawl, carefully measured and dripping with charm, is a tool honed to perfection. It serves as both a veneer of affability and a weapon of manipulation, allowing him to weave a web of deceit and ruthlessness that is as captivating as it is repugnant.

Nuanced Portrayals

Yet, it is Spacey’s ability to humanize this conniving character that truly distinguishes his performance. Underneath the veneer of power and manipulation lies a man haunted by demons, struggling to reconcile his insatiable thirst for control with the remnants of a wounded conscience. Spacey deftly reveals these internal conflicts through subtle shifts in his demeanor, a fleeting moment of vulnerability in his eyes, or a flicker of remorse that passes across his face. Through these nuanced portrayals, he exposes the frailty and complexity of a man consumed by his own ambition, thereby allowing us to empathize with a character we should otherwise despise.

As we witness Frank Underwood manipulate alliances, orchestrate political chess games, and exploit the vulnerabilities of others, we are reminded of the intricate power dynamics at play in our globalized world. House of Cards lays bare the cutthroat nature of international relations, where nations jockey for dominance, economies teeter on the brink of collapse, and the pursuit of self-interest often trumps collective well-being. However, House of Cards is anything but a morality tale. There is no attempt to attribute any redeeming qualities or to ascribe anything but naked self-interest to the main protagonists.

The outstanding supporting performances in House of Cards elevate the series to a new level of excellence. Robin Wright’s portrayal of Claire Underwood is nothing short of mesmerizing. With her steely gaze and unwavering determination, Wright embodies the essence of a complex and calculating political mastermind. Her nuanced performance reveals the layers of vulnerability beneath her icy exterior, leaving audiences both in awe and on edge. Michael Kelly’s portrayal of Doug Stamper, the loyal and morally ambiguous chief of staff, is equally captivating. Kelly infuses the character with a haunting mix of loyalty, ruthlessness, and tortured introspection, making Doug Stamper one of the most enigmatic and unforgettable characters on television.

Shaping and Distorting Narratives

One of the show’s most brilliant aspects is its exploration of the media’s role in shaping and distorting narratives. House of Cards paints a vivid picture of how stories are carefully constructed and manipulated to serve the interests of the powerful. It exposes the underbelly of journalism, revealing how information is weaponized and truth becomes a malleable concept in the hands of those seeking to maintain control. One cannot help but be reminded of the Hunter Biden laptop fiasco where prominent outlets like The New York Times tried to dismiss the smoking gun as “Russian disinformation” in the lead-up to the last election so as not to hurt Joe Biden’s chances. As it turned out, the story was completely accurate and implicated Hunter for peddling influence with overseas business consortiums during his father’s tenure as vice president.

The young and ambitious journalist Zoe Barnes (Kata Mara) becomes one of Frank’s most compelling and tragic victims. From the onset, Frank presents himself as Zoe’s mentor, capitalizing on her youthful enthusiasm and hunger for success. He entices her with the allure of inside information, secrets whispered into her ear like a siren’s song. Barnes, dazzled by the proximity to power and blinded by ambition, becomes a willing participant in Underwood’s game.

Underwood’s manipulation is often veiled by a veneer of mentorship and guidance. He instills in Barnes a belief that she is an integral part of his grand plan, a trusted confidante. Yet, this perceived importance is nothing more than a means to an end. Underwood subtly stokes her ambition, pushing her to dig deeper and even cross ethical boundaries, all to serve his own interests.

As Barnes begins to question their arrangement and seeks to gain agency, she becomes a liability to Underwood. In a chilling turn of events, he coldly removes her from the equation, ruthlessly eliminating any threat to his power. Zoe Barnes becomes a cautionary tale of the price one pays for dancing too closely with a puppet master like Frank Underwood.

Revealing the Real Puppet Masters

House of Cards delves into the murky world of lobbyists and big business, highlighting their insidious influence on shaping legislation and manipulating political outcomes. The series peels back the curtain on the unsavory dance between politicians and those who pull their strings, and exposes the ways in which corporate interests can infiltrate the highest levels of government. 

In season six, we are introduced to the Shepherd Foundation, or “the power behind the power”. Portrayed as an insidious force, it weaves its influence behind the scenes, manipulating the levers of power to shape the political landscape. Much like the dark undercurrents of real-life power structures, the Shepherd Foundation exercises its influence discreetly, employing an arsenal of tactics designed to further its agenda while maintaining an illusion of philanthropy. 

The uncanny parallels between the Shepherd Foundation and the contemporary political landscape are impossible to ignore. In an era marred by hidden interests, Super PACs, and backroom dealings, House of Cards serves as a chilling mirror reflecting the realities of power dynamics in the real world. The pervasive influence of corporations, wealthy elites, and shadowy organizations resonates with our own political reality, where money and influence shape the trajectory of democracy. The parallels with real-world power brokers such as the Koch brothers on the right and George Soros on the left, who play a big role in shaping narratives, public opinion and foreign policy, are unmistakable.

While the controversies surrounding Kevin Spacey caused the showrunners Frank Pugliese and James Gibson to hastily rewrite the last season, truncating it at eight episodes instead of the planned thirteen, the exoneration of Spacey in the sexual harassment brought by Anthony Rapp may pave the way for the commissioning of a seventh season.Should Netflix choose to continue House of Cards, the absence of legal liability against Spacey would provide the opportunity to conclude the gripping narrative that has enthralled audiences for years.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Why House of Cards is More Relevant Than Ever appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The streets embraced this new sound, and soon MCs started grabbing the mic, spitting rhymes and turning parties into lyrical battlegrounds. The Furious Five, with their charismatic frontman Grandmaster Flash, took this shit to a whole new level. Their track “The Message” dropped in ’82, and it was a raw portrayal of the harsh realities of life in the ghetto. It was all about keepin’ it real, speaking truth to power, and giving a voice to the voiceless.

Then came the legendary golden age of hip hop, with a slew of iconic artists droppin’ bombs that would shape the game forever. Run-DMC, Rakim, Public Enemy, and N.W.A—the names alone command respect. They rhymed with passion, skill, and wit, raising their middle fingers to the system that kept their communities down.

These artists brought the themes of money, power, sex, and drugs to the forefront. They painted vivid pictures of the hustle, the grind, and the pursuit of paper. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “” exposed the dark side of the coke game, while N.W.A’s entire Straight Outta Compton album laid bare the reality of police brutality and systemic racism.

But rap wasn’t just about the struggle. It celebrated success, the hustle, and the good life. Biggie Smalls, the Notorious B.I.G., showed us the power of the hustle in “” with lyrics like, “It was all a dream, I used to read Word Up! Magazine, Salt-N-Pepa and Heavy D up in the limousine.” Those words were an anthem for anyone trying to rise up from the bottom.

And let’s not forget the ladies who paved their own way in this male-dominated scene. Salt-N-Pepa, Queen Latifah, and Lil’ Kim took control of their sexuality and gave a powerful voice to women in hip hop. With tracks like “Shoop” and “,” they owned their power and commanded respect.

As hip hop spread its wings, it evolved and morphed into new sub-genres and styles, including one of its most notorious and commercially successful; gangsta rap.

Fuck tha Police: The Birth of Gangsta Rap

Gangsta rap emerged in the mid-1980s as a subgenre of hip-hop music. It originated primarily in the African American communities of South Central Los Angeles, California. The term “gangsta” reflects the genre’s focus on depicting the realities of street life, crime, violence, and the experiences of urban youth in marginalized communities.

Several artists and groups played significant roles in the development of gangsta rap. One of the earliest and most influential figures was Schoolly D, who released songs like “P.S.K. What Does It Mean?” in 1985, known for their explicit and gritty portrayals of inner-city life. However, it was N.W.A (Niggaz Wit Attitude), a pioneering group from Compton, California, that brought gangsta rap to the mainstream.

N.W.A, consisting of members such as Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, MC Ren, and DJ Yella, released their groundbreaking album in 1988. It was characterized by its fearless lyrics that reflected the harsh realities of street violence, police brutality, and gang culture. Songs like “” and “” became anthems of resistance and gave voice to the frustrations and experiences of Black youth.

The success of N.W.A and Ice-T in the late ‘80s paved the way for other gangsta rap artists and crews to emerge, Snoop Dogg, Tupac Shakur, The Notorious B.I.G., and many more.

Perhaps nobody said it better than Tupac, an incredibly gifted rapper, poet and storyteller who became the poster child of Gangsta rap. In the song ‘Starin’ Through my Rear View’, he summed up the pain of his generation:

“Multiple gunshots fill the block, the fun stops/
Niggaz is callin cops, people shot, nobody stop/
I wonder when the world stopped caring last night/
Two kids shot while the whole block staring/
I will never understand this society, first they try
To murder me, then they lie to me/

A few beats later he spits out the hook, warning the world that the end is near.

“T���y got me starin’ at the world through my rearview/
Go on, baby, scream to God, he can’t hear you/
I can feel your heart beatin’ fast ’cause it’s time to die/
Gettin’ high, watchin’ time fly”

On September 7, 1996, Tupac was gunned down in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada. He was 25 years old.

His songs have become the stuff of legend with their mesmerizing beats and poetic take on the life of an outlaw, including “California Love”, “Till the End of Time”, All Eyez on Me”, “Hail Mary” and “When Thugz Cry”. Twenty-seven years after he died, his music still raises the room temperature and makes those booties jiggle like jello.    

It is important to note that while gangsta rap has been criticized for its explicit content and sometimes glorification of violence, it also provided a platform for artists to voice their frustrations and bring attention to social and political injustices. It remains an influential and impactful subgenre within the broader landscape of hip-hop music.

Demolishing Wokeness

The 2000s introduced us to a new wave of artists who took hip hop to new heights. Jay-Z, Eminem, and Kanye West became cultural icons, dominating charts and shaping the sound of a new era. Jay-Z’s “” captured the ambition and the hustle of a generation, while Eminem’s “” became an anthem for anyone chasing their dreams.

Hip hop has a reputation for being unapologetically raw and uncensored, often delving into themes that make the prim and proper folks squirm. Money, power, and sex are like the holy trinity of hip hop, and it’s entertaining to observe how they make the self-righteous cringe.

Take Jay-Z’s “,” for example. He says, “You know I thug ’em, fuck ’em, love ’em, leave ’em / ‘Cause I don’t fuckin’ need ’em.” Oh, mercy! That line sure doesn’t sit well with the sensitive souls who value emotional connection. But guess what? Jay-Z doesn’t give a damn about your delicate sensibilities.

Then we’ve got 50 Cent with his track “” He raps, “I don’t know what you heard about me / But a bitch can’t get a dollar out of me / No Cadillac, no perms, you can’t see / That I’m a motherfuckin’ P.I.M.P.” Oh, the horror! Denizens of the ivory tower can’t fathom why anyone would be so fixated on material possessions when there are deeper existential matters to ponder. It’s just not their cup of tea.

But here’s the thing: hip hop isn’t meant to cater to the refined tastes of the upper crust. It’s a cultural force that reflects the realities of the streets, where money, power, and sex often dominate the narrative. It’s unapologetic, brash, and larger than life. It speaks to a different audience, one that isn’t seeking intellectual enlightenment but rather a raw and authentic expression of life’s grittier side.

Celebrating sexual desire

Rap music has always prided itself on being counter-cultural, subversive, and rebellious. In a society where prudishness often reigns supreme, rap music serves as a bold middle finger to societal norms. It challenges the idea that discussions about sex should be kept behind closed doors and offers a raw, unfiltered portrayal of human desires.

In the realm of rap, hot women are like the Holy Grail. Artists can’t resist showering their lyrics with vivid descriptions of curvaceous figures, luscious lips, and hypnotizing gazes. From Sir Mix-a-Lot’s classic “” to Cardi B’s unapologetic celebration of female sexuality in “,” rap music revels in the art of celebrating the female form. Critics may scoff and call it superficial or objectifying, but let’s be honest here – it’s all part of the game.

In the world of rap, it seems like the number of sexual partners you’ve had is directly proportional to your street cred. You’ll often hear rap lyrics filled with accounts of late-night escapades, bedroom acrobatics, and enough innuendos to make your grandmother blush. It’s like a never-ending competition to outdo each other in the realm of sexual prowess, and we’re all here for the wild stories and exaggerated swagger.

Let’s give credit where it’s due – rap music has taken the art of wordplay and metaphors to a whole new level. While some may argue that explicit lyrics about hot women and sex lack depth, true connoisseurs of the genre know that there’s more beneath the surface. Most rappers are skilled wordsmiths, weaving intricate rhymes and clever metaphors that add layers of meaning to their lyrical prowess. So, even if it seems like a straightforward ode to sexual desire, there’s often an undercurrent of social commentary or personal expression lurking within those lascivious verses.

From Projects to Private Jets

Picture this: a struggling artist from the rough streets, surrounded by poverty and adversity, armed with nothing but a dream and a microphone. Fast forward a few years, and that same artist is now dripping in diamonds, cruising in luxury cars, and living in mansions that would make Scrooge McDuck blush. The rags-to-riches stories of iconic rappers not only embody the American Dream but also send up the anti-capitalist rhetoric popular in white liberal circles.

Hip hop’s success stories are nothing short of astonishing. Take Jay-Z, for example. From his humble beginnings in Brooklyn’s notorious Marcy Projects to becoming a , he’s the embodiment of the rags-to-riches narrative. He didn’t just become one of the most influential rappers of all time; he transformed himself into a business mogul, owning a stake in everything from music streaming platforms to luxury champagne brands. And he’s not alone. Artists like Dr. Dre, Sean Combs, and Rihanna have leveraged their talents and entrepreneurial spirit to build empires that would make Wall Street tremble. 

If there’s one thing successful rappers are unapologetic about, it’s flaunting their wealth. From diamond-encrusted grills to chains that weigh more than a small child, rappers have perfected the art of bling. Critics may decry this ostentatious display of opulence as shallow or materialistic, but let’s be real here – who doesn’t secretly want to rock a gold-plated suit while sipping Cristal from a diamond-studded goblet? Those rappers have turned the celebration of wealth into an art form, and their unapologetic embrace of luxury upends the anti-capitalist narrative, giving a middle finger to those who decry their success.

Materialism as a Middle Finger

Anti-capitalist rhetoric often bemoans the materialistic excesses of the wealthy, viewing them as symbols of greed and inequality. But here’s the thing – rappers have taken that narrative and flipped it on its head. They revel in the materialistic aspects of their success, not just as a personal indulgence but as a defiant act against a society that said they couldn’t make it. For them, the diamonds, the cars, and the lavish lifestyles aren’t just symbols of opulence; they’re a giant middle finger to a system that often keeps the underprivileged down. It’s their way of saying, “Look at me now!”

Beyond the bling and the flashy lifestyles, the most successful hip hop artists are defying anti-capitalist rhetoric through their entrepreneurial endeavors. They’re not just consuming wealth; they’re creating it. They’ve become savvy businesspeople, establishing record labels, fashion lines, and investment portfolios that generate money and opportunities for themselves and their communities. They’ve turned their hustle into a blueprint for success, inspiring generations to chase their dreams and break free from the chains of poverty.

While the haters may turn up their noses at their opulent displays of success, these artists have flipped the script. They’ve transformed materialism into a form of rebellion, entrepreneurship into a tool for empowerment, and their success into an inspiration for others to break free from the limitations imposed by society. So, let the champagne flow, the diamonds shine, and the rappers keep flipping the bird to anyone who says they can’t have it all.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Get Rich or Die Tryin’: Rappers Pursuing the American Dream appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Harry begins at what is the beginning for him, the terrible night his mother was hounded to her death by a mob of photographers. It quickly becomes evident that his life since that night has been shaped by her loss and his marriage seems to be shaped by his attempt to battle the media that stalked her.

Left alone with a family ill-equipped to help him grieve, Harry grew up feeling overlooked and underappreciated. But sometimes tragedy breeds tragedy, and, in Harry’s case, the pettiness, spite and lack of self-reflection that dominate his narrative turn his story into an absurdity. 

Harry & Megan: It’ll Never Last

Harry’s magical, misery tour 

We learn that after Diana’s death, Harry is left to live among a cast of characters so insalubrious they are entirely unbelievable. Charles, then Prince of Wales, dodders around with an old teddy bear, apparently a totem of his unhappy childhood. Despite Harry’s own humanitarian interests, he fails to tell us that his father established the Prince’s Trust, today one of the  UK’s leading charities. Instead, we discover that Charles turns up at one of his son’s school plays only to laugh at all the wrong moments. 

William, a balding bully fast losing his resemblance to Diana, dislikes Meghan solely because the press has derided her, not because his own experience might have induced that sentiment. That William first encouraged Harry to undergo therapy warrants nary a mention. 

A bizarre range of secondary figures make an appearance, presumably to highlight Harry’s misery. His history teacher was a bully for questioning why the prince didn’t show greater interest in learning about his own family. He pokes fun at an old matron at his boarding school. Why we need to know that Harry thought she was a greasy haired harridan with a crooked spine and stiff knees is anyone’s guess. You wonder if the Queen would have been spared his invective if she weren’t so universally venerated. 

In his zeal to convince us that he grew up in a world in which he was always second best, Harry manages to underplay a genuinely significant achievement. He won universal praise for setting up the Invictus Games – a sporting event for wounded servicemen and women – and gathered up the great and good (including the Obamas) to support his cause. It seems to have eluded Harry that the stuffy old Palace provided him with the opportunity to establish a global platform that many past royal spares would, and sometimes have, killed for (perhaps he should have paid more attention to those primary school history lessons). 

Harry and Meghan: In Pursuit of Wealth and Luxury

The paparazzi, we know, hunted Diana to her death. So Harry should be on safe ground when taking aim at the media. But here in particular, his anger blinds him to any semblance of accuracy. He is so seethingly insistent that the press drove away his girlfriends that you wonder if Meghan is the love of his life or simply the last woman standing. He writes that media intrusion led one of those former girlfriends, the TV presenter Caroline Flack, to take her life, prompting her former agent to accuse Harry of misconstruing the reasons behind Flack’s suicide. 

Meghan, the supporting actress 

And then, in Meghan Markle, Harry finds what he seems to have spent his adult life looking for: a cause for which he can go to battle with the media. 

Harry sees Meghan on Instagram and immediately thinks she’s both angelic and luminous. He takes it as a sign that a marathon series of text messages between them takes place on his mother’s birthday. And, almost from the get-go, he is convinced that the press are determined to harass and hound Meghan as they did his mother. 

In Harry’s version of events, almost every headline about Meghan has been racist and derogatory from the start, even when the facts suggest otherwise. He writes that Meghan, then his girlfriend, was driven to tears during a  visit to London after being faced with a barrage of negative headlines at the Whole Foods newsstand. Except that Whole Foods doesn’t sell newspapers and a skim of the headlines in November 2016 reveals very little about Meghan at all. 

What Meghan Markle Failed to Understand About the British Monarchy

On their wedding day, Harry sees snipers patrolling the roofs around Windsor and concludes that the threat level around his wedding is unparalleled, driven by racist coverage in the lead up to the wedding. In reality, there was no more or less security around Harry’s wedding than his brother’s.  

“Just shush”

It is an irony perhaps lost on Harry that accuracy is irrelevant to him as he attempts to convince us that the media were determined to drive Meghan to her end, as they did his mother. 

A legion of staff left the couple during their brief tenure within the Royal family but for Harry, allegations that his wife may have bullied some of them out are baffling. Instead, we learn that one of his many reminders that his wife is entirely lovely (entirely “magic”, in fact) came on the north coast of Scotland when Meghan sang to seals and they sang back. No where does he see fit to explain why his wife told Oprah the Palace never asked her to pose for photographers outside hospital after having her first child, but then recounted in some detail to Netflix the pressure she now claims she faced to do so. 

According to Harry, neither he nor Meghan accused the Royal family of racism during their outing with Oprah. Their words, he says, we’re misconstrued by the British press. Perhaps he didn’t glance over at his own local paper: “Meghan Markle, Prince Harry claim royal racism in Oprah talk”, ran the headline in The Los Angeles Times). 

Harry and Meghan: In Pursuit of Wealth and Luxury

Perhaps Harry remains blinded enough by grief that his own truth is the only truth that matters to him. 

For the rest of us, he might do well to cast his mind back to the private audio recordings Diana undertook with her speech coach, Peter Settelen, in the 1990s. Like almost everyone else in Diana’s life, Settelen saw fit to hand over her private conversations with him to the media after she died. At one point during a coaching session, William and Harry enter the room and Harry proceeds to cause a rumpus. “Harry, shush”, Diana tells her younger son. “Just shush.”&�Բ�����;

You have to hope he’s listening.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post For Harry, Meghan Is the New Real Spare appeared first on 51�Թ�.

I also delved into acting as a hobby. So much so that I became the first Indian American to become a member of the Screen Actors’ Guild (SAG) in the mid-Atlantic region section in 1993.

A call for representation

Acting roles in this area are cast first by announcements from the Washington or Baltimore region casting agencies. The announcements require you to be of a certain race, gender, and age range. 

They may call you in for an audition if there’s a fit. They select a few and call them back for a “call-back.” Then they’ll choose the actor for the role. Most union roles are for day-players and comprise just a few lines. Major roles are cast in Hollywood or New York.

These audition calls from SAG and SAG/AFTRA (now) always had a race requirement for the roles – but called for African Americans or Caucasians. What about us who do not fit into either category, folks? Needless to say, I complained to the unions but to no avail. 

Hollywood in Black and White

In theory, a union such as SAG/AFTRA should be the most open to all. In reality, it has been quite the opposite. How does that make sense? Having waited 30 years, the age range requirement, less than 50, has become the killer. But while I am out at this age, this piece is for the benefit of the younger generation of us “Neithers.”

The erasure of in-betweens

I still am made to feel that I am not part of this country despite the tremendous hard work I put in to become and be an American. Earlier, I was made to feel unwelcome by conservative Republicans when I came here in the 1970s. This persisted for a few decades. 

Now, I am made to feel unwelcome by the so-called liberal Democrats, the Hollywood engine, and the media. Indian Americans and many such minorities are between a rock and a hard place. They do not fit into the dominant categories that define American politics and society. It is time that the media took this on.   

Is this country made up of only blacks and whites? An alien coming here and watching TV or movies would think so. Almost percent of the commercials on TV have African American faces. Until a few months ago, 40-50% were white faces. 

According to the last census, this is a slap in the face of Hispanics and Asian-Americans, who make up 20% and 7% of the population, about twice as much as African Americans who comprise 13%.

Hollywood Does it Again

Do the media executives and Hollywood head honchos think we do not exist and that we  are thingamajigs who do not count? Or do they just want us to spend the money on their products and remain behind the scenes? 

Do these bigshots wish to avoid seeing our faces on your TV and movie screens? Or is it that if they cover, pay attention to the two extremes in skin color, the black and white, that they feel they have done their duty to be fair and that they can now brush the equitable representation off their jacket sleeves? Should all others, the in-betweens, go to hell? Are media bigshots that thick-headed?

Time for Limelight

Decreasing the white actors from 60% to 50% affects them marginally as a group. Increasing African-American participation almost doubles or triples their participation. This development is welcome. It is positive. However, should this take place at the cost of us Neithers?

We just get squeezed out to zero. Can’t anyone see that? Our representation would make for a fairer representation of the country. Also, wouldn’t that make the media scene more interesting?

This lack of representation of Neithers is a clear case of open discrimination in employment by race. All actors’ jobs are paid, and no such discrimination is allowed by law. A small variance may be an accident, but this conspicuous absence of Neithers clearly indicates systemic discrimination in the media.

So, I call upon media bosses to open our living rooms to Native Americans, Hispanics and Asians, as you have done with African-Americans. Give these Neithers space and acceptance. No, Hollywood, you damn well have not solved the race problem yet. There was more acceptance, curiosity and admiration for Eastern and Latin cultures 40-50 years ago than there is now. Hollywood, you have regressed and left us Neithers in the shadows.

Are all people in this world Blacks and Whites? If you think so, you are an ignoramus and not at all a globalist as you want to pretend to be. Asians and Latin Americans comprise almost of the world’s population. Do not be obtuse. If you think so, your movies will not sell worldwide – with half the revenue coming from international showings. 

How many do you know who can be counted as celebrities, as huge role models? And compare that to how many African-Americans or Whites. Then look at the percentages of the population in this country, let alone the world, and see if it makes any sense. 

Yes, we can come here, and many even are born, but we have to remain in the background, by your surreptitious designs. Wake up and smell the tea; it is also quite popular worldwide!

[ edited this article.]

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I was reminded of this by the last installment of “” (H&M). Netflix’s six-part documentary on the eponymous pair. The celebrity couple are not characters in a narrative, nor component parts of a wider narrative: they actually are the narrative.

Perpetual Motion

The thing about narratives is: they advance. Celebrities have to be in perpetual motion, especially in the modern era, when traditional expertise in singing, acting or modeling is no longer necessary. Many of the people audiences follow, often worshipfully, don’t claim to possess any particular skills germane to the mainstream entertainment industry. They just exist. And their existence excites audiences.

Harry and Meghan are such creatures. This is probably unfair because Meghan, when plain “Meghan Markle,” displayed her acting chops and could boast she was known as a screen actor before she met the late Princess Diana’s youngest son. Harry could also react to this, reminding us of his royal credentials: he is, after all, the son of the King of England and, as such, is always likely to attract interest.

At the moment, there is no end in sight. Netflix is thought to have paid the gilded pair about $100 million for the documentary, meaning Harry and Meghan are earning too much money to change what appears to be an emerging formula: talk in a manner that hints at confidentiality, about one subject — Harry & Meghan (the ampersand serves to remind us that this is a product rather than two individual humans). The public appetite for inconsequential intel from the Palace seems ravenous and, where there is hungriness, the pair will serve up more nourishing scraps.

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A World of Their Own Design

Harry and Meghan are a pair of voluptuaries cocooned in a world of their own design: They’ve chosen to decamp to Southern California and co-exist with the media, creating a reality in which they appear on screens and are paid handsomely for their presence. They talk pleonastically about themselves and their travails with the British royal family. Disclosures about microaggressions at the Palace catch the headlines. But they appear to feel no obligations to corroborate or offer even inference in support of the claims.

Accusations of racism in the media are always liable to stir interest. So, when Meghan complains about being described as “exotic,” we can understand how the stereotype implicit in the adjective might have upset someone so delicate. But is it likely to cause trauma? Possibly. Though not in the way the victim of a racist attack who needs hospital attention is traumatized. Meghan’s complaint tends to trivialize the effect of racism. An alternative response would be to congratulate Meghan for helping stimulate an international discussion of racist harassment and misconduct at Buckingham Palace.

Since December 2016, when Meghan was photographed in Toronto wearing a gold necklace featuring the letters “M” and “H,” Harry and Meghan have dominated the media and thrilled audiences. Six years is a long time in celebrity culture. Typically celebrities without obvious proficiencies in traditional entertainment maintain prominence by keeping their narrative moving. Kim Kardashian and her relatives are virtuosos: Whether beingheld up at , wearing Marilyn Monroe’s clothes, or going through a divorce, Kim has been adept at surprising her audience. In this way, she’s kept her narrative in motion, changing direction in unexpected ways, so fans have no time to tire.

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Plot Twist?

Unless Meghan has a “”-like twist in preparation, the people who are fascinated by her and her husband’s divulgences will become jaded and the Netflix fees will be a thing of the past. A divorce would work. But it’s difficult to predict what else will convince audiences that they are a couple worth watching. Think of the great narratives of recent years. Johnny Depp and Amber Heard kept people rapt with a long court saga of Homeric proportions. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez aka Bennifer were the power couple of the early 2000s, and nearly two decades later after splitting up, they got engaged again after rekindling their romance in 2021. The narrative proved compelling because no one ever thought it had actually stopped, even in 2004 when they announced they were parting. Everyone somehow knew they’d get back together.

Arguably, the most fascinating celebrity narrative this century is Britney Spears: A best-selling singer in her teens, Spears is now 41 and has rarely been out of the news in more than three decades. Only Kardashian, who came to the public’s attention in 2007 courtesy of a sex tape, challenges traditional entertainers in terms of longevity.

One-dimensional

Keen readers will know where I’m headed: Harry & Meghan is nearing its terminus. The same audiences who have been gratified by the Palace tittle tattle and tales of the internecine spats will now expect something different. Neither Harry nor Meghan shows much potential to deliver anything apart from more-of-the-same. Harry, in particular, appears a likable but one-dimensional character who has an inexhaustible appetite for talking about himself, but nothing else.

Meghan, in fairness, stokes interest with her legal cases and her troubled family background; but there surely can’t be much more mileage in that. Her preparedness to share heartbreaking experiences, as she did in the, will chime with many. “Losing a child means carrying an almost unbearable grief, experienced by many but talked about by few,” she wrote in 2020. ( later blamed The Daily Mail for his wife’s miscarriage.)

Meghan could try to morph into a lifestyle guru, like Martha Stewart, perhaps lending her imprimatur to a range of upscale products. Or tread a similar path to her friend Oprah Winfrey and host her own talk show. Harry might add value as a co-host. Another baby is too predictable.

Less fortuitous events are often newsworthy. A near-death experience did the trick for in 1961. A dreadful accident in 1984 pushed to the fore of public attention. imprisonment in 2007 created enormous interest. No one wishes comparable experiences on H&M, but, realistically, they would keep the narrative running.

They could become the celebrity equivalent of the Harry Potter books: Readers never tire of reading these over and over. Or the 1997 movie “Titanic,” which fans watch multiple times. I doubt it. There’s no final chapter in this or any other celebrity narrative: they often disappear into obscurity with several issues unresolved and plot strands left straggling. Harry & Meghan are already close.

People who love them admire their attack on the royal family and the historical elitism it embodies. What others find hard-to-bear is the inflated sense of their own importance, their eagerness to discern unworthy motives, the parasitic existence they’ve created for themselves and their seeming disdain for decent people who lack the wealth and glamor they’ve been gifted.[Ellis Cashmore’s latest book is.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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When I shared with him the fact that I came in second place, he informed me, strangely enough, that in case of an injury to the first place winner, I might be called upon to represent Morocco. I immediately dismissed the idea as I had no wish that such a thing might befall on Fatima Zahra, our newly crowned Miss Morocco. She carried the title beautifully, and we were all so proud of her. I arrived home and spent that evening telling my aunt and mother about the emotionally-charged experience the pageant had been for me. I felt the presence of my grandmother hovering above me the entire time.

Call it a premonition or fate. The taxi driver’s words later became a reality, which meant I would be going to Israel to represent Morocco during the Miss Universe 2021 competition. Life’s events are not as arbitrary as they seem, after all. Although Fatima Zahra’s injury was unfortunate, I think it served to teach us different lessons. She kindly expressed her trust in my abilities, her benevolent candor reflecting  her inner radiance. Today, she continues to personally and professionally blossom, and it has been a true pleasure witnessing that evolution  from afar.

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Not everyone was supportive. The political climate around Israel and Palestine has always been delicate, and the topic is still as sensitive as ever. When the location of the Miss Universe event was initially announced, people immediately began to express their discontent on social media. At the same time, the political relationship between Algeria and Morocco had also become a sensitive topic. My grandmother’s Algerian roots created an additional issue for some people. As soon as I was announced as the newly crowned Miss Morocco, someone unearthed a video depicting me sharing my grandmother’s life story meant to demonstrate the power of choice. This provoked a public debate about my legitimacy as an ambassador of Morocco.

I instantly became a name  in the news, as some journalists evidently sought to exploit the story. Others working in the media described the phenomenon as a strategic maneuver designed to generate more “buzz”, in other words, a publicity stunt. In my own thoughts I continued to ponder the notion of identity.

Discovering familiarity in a foreign land

Jerusalem is described as the city of peace, yet it contains the pain and passions of diverse peoples. We walked along its storied streets marked with the remnants of a diverse religious patrimony, a pattern of temples, churches, mounts, and mosques spread across its surface, mapping out something like a constellation. This route of sacred sites held more than nominal significance for me. As my ears rang to the greetings of “shalom” and “salam,” I wished for just that: peace.

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With approximately 700,000 in Israel with Moroccan Jewish ancestry, I was frequently approached by individuals who proudly expressed their families’ Moroccan origins. They generously offered me tokens of appreciation, even  my evening gown. They shared various types of food with me as well as smiles, hugs, songs, dances, and cheers. It produced the effect of a deeply rooted sense of amity. With a declining Moroccan Jewish population, these stories felt like echoes from a distant past. I had educated myself on this aspect of my country’s history, but the experience of being exposed to the number of people who came to me and made clear how widespread remembrance of the Moroccan Jewish past remains. I found the fact that it is  still celebrated eye-opening and, quite simply, wonderful.

One evening, Miss Universe 2020, Miss USA, Miss Israel, and I had the pleasure of dining together at the home of Eli Lankri, mayor of Eilat. His wife, whose joie de vivre was contagious,  had prepared an array of familiar dishes—couscous and shebakiya among them. The melodies of an oud accompanied us as we spoke of the memories the hosts had formed during their childhood in Morocco.

Stories that came into being long before my existence were thus  transmitted created an intergenerational as well as intercultural link. What had previously felt to me like random echoes of the past instead took the form of artfully composed symphonies. During my stay in Israel, I became fascinated by the land, by its capacity to juxtapose faiths, and the fact that the Dead Sea happens to be the lowest point on Earth. I contemplated that maybe, just maybe, this mix of the high and low has created a unique midpoint, one that celebrates difference, coexistence, and understanding.

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Growing up, I attended an American school in the morning and returned home to speak Darija and French. I then extended my academic journey in France while pursuing an anglophone program. Exploration was my native language, and the cultural dichotomy I grew up in was where I felt most comfortable. The people I met during my stay, though they had not been to Morocco in years, considered themselves to be as Moroccan as any other Moroccan citizen. So, how does one measure Moroccanness?

I mean that, to me, being Moroccan means creating space for both yourself and the other. It means respecting your beliefs as much as any other individual’s beliefs, demonstrating tolerance and coexistence. It means equally valuing two seemingly opposing thoughts, making the desire to understand the underlying force behind our eclectic relationships.

Being Moroccan means having freedom inculcated into our biological blueprint. Adorned with colorful intricacies, our tables, tapestries, ceilings, floors, and living rooms continue to celebrate our innate vibrance. The Moroccan man walks to the end of his sentences with hope and gratitude. The Moroccan woman wears courage on her sleeve as she gracefully embodies liberty. Morocco is where despair surrenders to faith and where cynicism is replaced by a wise smile or a warm piece of homemade bread. It is a place where empathy is the  local currency, giving value to everything.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Whisked Away By The Zeitgeist

The fascination with Swift is probably unparalleled: worldwide and seemingly inexhaustible. Fifteen years ago, she was a sweet, skillful and promising country singer. Today, she is the seventh wonder of the world. Last November, tickets for her forthcoming Era tour were released to “verified” fans: the demand was so unprecedented that theTicketmaster site under the weight of “extraordinarily high demands” and “insufficient” tickets. About 2.4 million fans applied. Within days, it was reported that prices for single Era tour tickets were listed on resale sites as high as $17,860 — a price beyond all but affluent adults (passionately devoted affluent adults too) or child stars.

The tour — which starts March 17 —  is intended to support Swift’s tenth album Midnights. Even at a time when physical sales of recordings are a relic of the previous century, Swift’s album sold 1.5 million units in its first week of release in October, 2022 — the first time a musician had sold over a million in an opening week since Swift herself did so with Reputation in 2017. Streaming of Midnights exceeded a billion in days. In 2022, Forbes estimated her personal wealth to be $570m.

Some artists are just meant to be: Elvis and the others mentioned earlier were pop gods in waiting: so close to the zeitgeist they were, like Dorothy and Toto, bound to be whisked away and carried to greatness, their music, demeanor, look, antics perfectly in harmony with the times. Others are harder to figure out: Swift is one of them. It’s easy to mistake her music for good rather than brilliant. She looks interesting, but not in the same flamboyant way as, say, Rihanna or Lady Gaga. There have been no outrageous stunts or splashy displays of wealth that typically guarantee the kind of coverage Kim Kardashian and her siblings have exploited so expertly. Swift has either steered or been swept clear of caricatured performances.

Her only moment that came close to explosive was at the 2009 MTV Video Awards ceremony when the artist formerly known as Kanye West interrupted her acceptance speech and sparked a long feud. West aka Ye later claimed he was motivated by god to make his intervention. If so, god might legitimately be considered to have delivered Swift to her eminence. Because the years-long dispute with Ye probably boosted her reputation. 

Yet, she is unmistakably great — and I use the word as an attribution rather than a property: if enough people acknowledge her greatness, she actually is great. So, why is she considered so illustriously above the average?

Authenticity by Kismet or Design?

The greatest entertainers are those who understand how much of themselves to reveal to audiences. For most of the twentieth century, a little went a long way and performers allowed only glimpses of what used to pass as private lives. All that changed with the onset of celebrity culture and, today, anyone with ambitions in the entertainment industry is obliged to sign a Mephistophelean contract: success is conditional on the surrender of private lives. Swift was only fifteen when she signed for Big Machine, a Nashville label, in 2005. For the next 10 years, she was a meticulous chronicler of her own developing status: her records were mostly autobiographical reflections on “my-life-as-a-popstar.”

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Media studies scholar Maryn Wilkinson thinks this “” was crucial to Swift’s early success and it made her relationship with fans almost intimate. Los Angeles Times’ Mikael Wood the intimacy “wasn’t a product of kismet but of design” but her music was so shimmering that “eventually you stop caring what’s drawn directly from Swift’s real life and what’s not.”

It’s worth pondering this point because the sense of intimacy Swift created endured. No artist has used social media more artfully than Swift. The Guardian writer Alim Kheraj her “a ringmaster of fan service,” the reference to the ringmaster suggesting how she conducts and directs her fans. And remember, her fan base spans the age spectrum, so her ability to coordinate is quite a feat.

Were Swift’s progress uneventful, her personal history might not have captivated her fans. But it was anything but: she had a major fall-out with Big Machine’s owner Scott Borchetta when in 2019 he sold the label to Ithaca Holdings, owned by Scooter Braun, whom Swift disliked. While Swift had negotiated a deal with Borchetta that allowed her to own the masters of later albums, the ownership — and thus ability to earn from — her first six albums transferred to Braun. This meant that he could earn money from the use of Swift’s early music in, for example, advertising, tv programs, films and so on. She would have no control over where and how her music would be used. Characteristically, Swift made her annoyance well known on Instagram, Tumblr and other social media.

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An acrimonious and serpentine dispute ensued and fans were offered ringside seats as both Swift and Braun vented on social media. Feuds like this are reliable ways of galvanizing interest. Swift resolved to re-record her early music, announcing this on social media, of course. She did exactly that and, with typical ringmaster’s flair, urged her fans to buy the new recordings, even if they already owned the originals. Sales suggested they were mostly compliant.

What Next?

This wasn’t the only splenetic dispute that kept Swift occupied. The earlier-mentioned incident with Ye in 2009 started a squabble that dragged on for several years. Celebrity feuds are usually popular with audiences and serve to keep the disputants in the news. Ye was presumably aware of this when he rapped, “I made that bitch famous” on his 2016 track “Famous.” The altercation broadened when Ye’s then wife Kim Kardashian got involved. Her involvement at any level guaranteed a global audience, not just of observers, either: the heated exchanges were conducted largely on social media, allowing interested fans to feel they were participating.

The disputes lend a nimbus of complexity to Swift: she may bewitch fans with her music, but she makes a no-holds-barred enemy if you cross her. Her fights are spectator sports but ones in which her fans are allowed to brawl too. And not just on social media: they buy her albums, if only to ensure she wins the day. When someone, especially a god-fearing American, wields the kind of influence over human life, thought and action Swift evidently does, the imagination starts to wander and the mind starts to wonder: What might she do next?

 She could break Spotify’s single-day streaming numbers again. Or sell-out a record number of concerts at record high ticket prices. And she could carry on winning every conceivable music award. Or she could try something new.

Unsurpassed Influence

In 2018, Swift celebrated her win at the American Music Awards by urging her followers to vote in the midterm elections. For years, her blue eyes and blonde hair endeared her to the US’s alt-right, the rightwing movement that rejects mainstream politics and uses online sources to disseminate its supremacist ideology. But her injunction put paid to the alt-right rumors and appeared to align her with the Democrats, a party for which she could become valuable. Influence comes in many shapes and forms. When a popstar, then not even 30, tells voters to exercise their right, it might not make much difference. There again, maybe it will.

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In September 2021, in 51�Թ�, I asked the question: Is Oprah the Most Influential Person Ever? I thought she was. Now, I think Swift surpasses her. Think of her demographic: not just teenagers or starry-eyed twentysomethings, but heads of family, perhaps even grandparents. I repeat the figure 44 percent of all Americans. I doubt if any pop singer in history ever had such wide and deep appeal. Within that dense fan base is a dutiful alliance committed to maintaining her dominion. Swift’s onetime adversary Ye plans to run for in 2024 and, while Swift herself has given no indication that she has no comparable ambitions, there’s a temptation to ponder what theoretically she could achieve in 2028. She will be 39, four years younger than John F. Kennedy was when he was inaugurated as President.  

[Ellis Cashmore’s latest book is .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Listen to her howlin’ roar

Metal under tension

Beggin’ you to touch and go

Highway to the Danger Zone

Ride into the Danger Zone”

, the adrenalin-pumping title song of the original Top Gun film, spawned a whole generation of American patriots willing to do or die for their country. Perhaps no other film has done more for American patriotism than Top Gun. Those were heady days, before Iraq, before 9/11 and before COVID-19, when America was seen as invincible and immortal – the quasi-mythical “shining city upon a hill.” In those heady days, everyone wanted to be American. The duo of Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer saw the future in Tom Cruise, a fresh-faced actor in his early 20s, and the rest as they say, is history.

Today, when America is at its nadir – in the wake of a devastating pandemic, hamstrung by a bumbling, senile president and benighted by two major powers waiting to take its place –  along comes Hollywood to the rescue, with its most unabashedly nationalistic film to date: Top Gun Maverick. Audiences around the world have been tearing up at the big sweeping emotions and glorious old Hollywood spectacle unfolding on celluloid, and the box office is testimony to their enthusiasm. The film has become one of the highest grossing films of all time, earning over a billion dollars in revenues.

Patriotism on Steroids

The dream team of director Joseph Kosinski and Tom Cruise deliver the goods with a fiercely patriotic visual extravaganza. So immersive is the film and so persuasive its message – that America is the greatest country on earth – we cannot help but go along for the ride. The aerial combat choreography is mindblowing. The viscerally gripping action sequences propel you into the cockpit. You experience what the pilots are going through at high G-forces, like you’re actually in the aircraft with them- because you are – the actors had to go through rigorous flight training and flew real fighter jets during filming.

In an early scene, we see a rear admiral commenting on Maverick’s penchant for taking risks, saying, “Despite your best efforts you refuse to die.” He wonders why Maverick �󲹲���’t been promoted: “You should at least be a two-star admiral by now. Yet here you are, captain. Why is that?”  “It’s one of life’s mysteries, sir” comes Maverick’s deadpan reply.  

 Cruise was in his early 20s when he played Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in the original Top Gun – a ballsy young navy pilot with the Kawasaki motorcycle and the need for speed. In his latest avatar, he’s 25 years older, but as cocky and irreverent as ever. In a nail-biting opening sequence, Maverick pushes a fifth generation fighter beyond Mach 10 (ten times the speed of sound), earning his laurels as ‘the fastest man alive’. The aircraft engines catch fire and it plummets to the ground, almost killing Maverick in the process. Partly as punishment, and in part because he is seen as the perfect candidate for the job, Maverick is ordered to return to Top Gun, the elite pilot-training school, to train a group of ace pilots for what seems like a suicide mission.  

What follows is a dazzling spectacle of high octane patriotism: America’s best and brightest put everything on the line –  while engaging in some of the most exhilarating aerial combat ever filmed – to take out an enemy base, and come back victorious after narrowly escaping the jaws of death.

Part of a Longstanding Pattern

Like other films and TV shows in the genre – American Sniper, Homeland, Patton, Charlie Wilson’s War, Argo, Hacksaw Ridge, Saving Private Ryan, Independence Day – Top Gun Maverick embellishes the idea of America as a keeper of the peace, a paragon of freedom and upholder of the “rules based order.” The truth, however, is very different. The US, through its national security apparatus – the Pentagon, CIA and NSA, and their media assets – will go to any lengths to maintain its cultural and political hegemony. This includes demonizing popular foreign leaders, imposing crushing sanctions on countries that step out of line, sponsoring coups and death squads, toppling elected leaders, installing puppet regimes and trafficking narcotics on an unprecedented scale as in the Iran-Contra affair.

Some commentators both in India and the West, habitually dub films like Top Gun Maverick as state propaganda” – which has a ring of truth – but these films can also be seen as a powerful means to unify fragmented populations and boost morale during uncertain times. They also polish the image of a brutal and deeply flawed civilization, giving it an imprimatur of greatness that belies its bloody past. No single entity has done as much to imprint the image of America as the “land of the free and home of the brave” upon billions of minds than Hollywood. Nationalism, in the context of Hollywood tent-pole cinema, is projected and perceived as social service of the highest order.

Lessons for India

If Hollywood can succeed in branding America as the greatest nation on earth, there’s no reason why the Indian film industry – with its world-class technical talent and increasingly huge budgets – cannot do the same.

Not only can Indian films expose the world to this ancient civilization’s mind-boggling mythological and historical wonders, they can also dispel obsolete colonial tropes about the nation. The world’s largest democracy can no longer be defined solely by its squalor, corruption and social inequities, just as America is not depicted exclusively as the land of endemic racism, slavery, genocide and nuclear Armageddon. As such, Bollywood must also make films keeping larger global audiences in mind – like the wildly successful Telugu film – rather than pandering to smaller demographic slices that are anyway turning to mainstream international fare in larger numbers than ever before. Otherwise, Bollywood risks completely irrelevance.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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One participant referred to the conference as the “Davos of Metaphysicians.” More than 40 philosophers hailing from top universities such as Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton, Columbia, Sciences Po, Australian National University, Delhi University, Peking University,  the Universities of Bologna, Salamanca and Mexico City, agreed to meet after receiving strict instructions not to let the media even suspect the existence of the event before the publication of the final report. Moreover, to ensure a minimum of contamination, the organizers excluded from the debate any philosopher who had even dabbled in political thought or geopolitical matters in any publication at any point in their career. It was feared that anyone with such a profile might be compromised and be tempted to avert the press.

Philosophers Refute Plato

After four days of deliberations, which some privately called excruciatingly frustrating and unproductive, the council of philosophers emerged from a state of secrecy worthy of a papal conclave to issue a statement that began by countering Plato’s ancient recommendation that a good republic should be governed by philosophers. The council had the humility to cite its own chaotic deliberations as an illustration of why philosophers could not be trusted to govern effectively or even run any significant political entity.

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The council then began by listing other profiles that should equally be excluded from any role in governing. Inspired by the ancient Athenian example, a significant majority agreed that it would always be dangerous to attribute power to any professional politician, a status they defined as anyone who has served in an office of public service for more than a fixed number of months or years. The council failed to agree on a specific number but settled on an outside limit of not more than three years.

The most radical philosophers proposed a term of three months for any political office. Their proposal is worth citing because it stipulated that after three months of service, the outgoing political representatives would assist and advise their incoming counterparts with full decision making authority to ensure continuity in government. This innovative idea was rejected by the majority of philosophers.

Philosophers found it hard to reach agreement on numerous other issues. In their defense, they had only four days of deliberations. One of them complained afterwards that they failed to agree upon the mode of selection of public officials. Some wanted a lottery à la ancient Athens. Others wanted a good old fashioned election. Yet others such as the Indians and the Chinese suggested tough entrance examinations. A few wanted a combination of all three models. This matter could not be resolved for lack of time.

The Smoke Signal

On the afternoon of the fourth day, the council of philosophers broke its seal of secrecy and notified what they considered the most reputable media organization in the Western world to unveil the outcome of their deliberations. 51�Թ� has seen the final report and finds the council’s work insightful. Other media organizations do not share this sentiment. They complained that the philosophers had failed to notify the media in advance. Besides, with Ukraine going on, who had time to pay attention to egg-headed philosophers?

With few exceptions, the media appeared to refuse to publish the results of the conference or even acknowledge its existence. The philosophers took umbrage and declared that philosophers should not be the only group not allowed to govern. Anyone who had ever worked with the media in any capacity should be excluded from governing. They also made a unanimous recommendation that anyone trusted with governing should be prohibited from accepting any remunerated activity with the media after stepping down from office.

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The council of philosophers also excluded several  other professions from governing, including lawyers, financial professionals, C-level executives, military officers, entertainment and sports professionals. The council could come to no definitive agreement about shopkeepers and published an inconclusive statement about them. The council nearly degenerated into a riot when the question of teachers came up. The debate was so acrimonious that at one point the chairman of the session, a distinguished female philosopher at Cambridge, barely escaped injury from a cell phone tossed at her head. Numerous chairs and tables were damaged, some beyond repair.

Because of deep disagreement on the question of trusting teachers to govern, the philosophers decided that a new conference would be required in 2023 just to deal with that issue. One anonymous philosopher remarked that this was largely because nearly every philosopher is either currently teaching or has done so in the past. Several participants mentioned that the one thing the majority of philosophers could agree on is that self-interest is a significant variable capable of perverting any governance decision, whatever the form of government. The full report of the council is available at this link, which we urge all readers to consult.

Most commentators in the media deny that such a conference of philosophers even took place. Assuming that no such conference assembled, a reasonable case can still be made that, given the flagrant failure of our political institutions to avoid not just war, but also the destruction of the environment, pandemics, imminent famine in many parts of the world and ever-growing economic injustice, the insight of a council of philosophers sincerely attempting to answer the question of how political power is structured and what it accomplishes could be deemed desirable.

But the philosophers cited above, whether or not they actually exist, were probably right. The philosophers themselves cannot be counted on to lead, and those who hold power cannot be counted on to follow whatever authentic wisdom philosophers might produce.

The views expressed  in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Lopez was sitting with her beau of the time, Ben Affleck, a white Californian built like a light-heavyweight boxer (she may be back with him now). You’ll understand shortly why I’m being specific about their particulars.

You Can Take the Man Out of the Ghetto…

Watching the past weekend’s Oscars , I immediately wondered: What if Chris Rock, an African American comedian, had cracked a gag at the expense of JLo and not Jada Pinkett Smith? After Martin’s joke, Lopez grinned politely, while Affleck, seated next to her, was clearly unimpressed but forced a transparently false smile.

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But what if he had taken offense, like Will Smith, a black actor with a similar build to Affleck, did? If Affleck marched onto the stage and smacked Rock across the face, the situation would have taken on a completely different dynamic. The headlines would have read: White Actor Strikes Diminutive Black Host. Rock is 5 foot 7 inches and, in boxing terms, looks about a featherweight.

The media would have reacted differently, though how differently we’ll never know. One thing is for sure: The episode would have taken on a racial character.

Even as it was, Smith’s assault on Rock is loaded with racial implications, the most obvious one being that he supplied white racists with sustenance. There is an that “You can take the man out of the ghetto but you can’t take the ghetto out of the man.” Racists subscribe to this and often cite the examples of O.J. Simpson and Mike Tyson, both African Americans who became conspicuously successful and had more money than they could count. Both, in their different ways, imploded.

Smith �󲹲���’t committed an offense comparable with rape or any other kind of violent crime. And the LAPD has declared it will not seek prosecution. So, Smith’s contretemps is likely to remain that: an embarrassment rather than a crime.

But let’s face it: Had it occurred in a different context, the likelihood is that the perpetrator of the offense would be arrested and charged. There would be no trouble finding witnesses, either. Smith behaved like a perfect racial stereotype: hot-tempered, bull-headed, thuggish and, most importantly, incapable of controlling his emotions even in an environment where decorum prevailed. Even after Smith returned to his seat, he screamed obscenities at Rock, who lacked the wit to turn the episode into something worthy of laughter. His was an unedifying exhibition of uncontrolled aggression.

Surprisingly, Smith was not ejected and, indeed, later picked up an award for best actor.

Animating Masculinity

But pandering to stock racist types was not Smith’s only offense. His action was borderline misogynistic, perhaps even enhancing the racial stereotype he’d brought to life. Consider if it was a case of Will being taken over by his emotion, seeing the look on his wife’s face, probably under family stress with her condition and snapping. Or a black man animating an anachronistic form of masculinity, historically associated, though not exclusively, with black men. After all, the amusing line was aimed at his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who has alopecia, a condition that manifests in the partial or complete absence of hair from areas of the body where it normally grows; baldness, in other words.

Couldn’t she have responded to the insult herself? She may have felt a more dignified silence was the best policy. But she might also have answered back with an equally acerbic remark. Or, if she had been moved to act, Pinkett Smith could have administered the slap in the face herself. She’s about the same size as Rock, so it wouldn’t have been the mismatch that actually did take place. Since when do women need their husbands, partners or male friends to take care of their business? Jada looked slightly disgusted by Rock’s remark, but, so far, her views on her husband’s violent behavior aren’t known. Had she objected to it, we would have surely found out by now.

Since #MeToo gained momentum in the aftermath of the Harvey Weinstein case, the flagrant manipulation and abuse of women by men — especially powerful ones — has become visible through the testimonies of countless women. We probably suspected for years that men get away with mistreating women in more ways than one. But #MeToo has effectively put the brake on this egregious historical practice.

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What about men’s abuse of other men? I know readers will think I am stretching this too far, but surely men have the right not to be coerced, harassed or intimidated too. Rock was only doing his job — the tradition at Oscar ceremonies is to “roast,” as Americans call it. That is, to subject guests to good-natured criticism. For many, he may have overstepped the mark by making fun of what is, after all, a medical condition. But the informal rules about what constitutes good or bad taste change year by year. Rock is at least entitled to expect the people he insults will be familiar enough with the custom that they take the ridicule in the spirit he intends.

Victims of Domestic Abuse

The LAPD’s intention not to pursue the case raises a final issue. Should it be necessary for a to press charges when an obvious assault has been committed? Rock is clearly embarrassed by the affair, and his failure to file a complaint presumably reflects his desire to have the incident quickly forgotten. Countless women and men, who have been victims of domestic abuse, do not press charges. But their motivations are usually very, very different. Often, they are pressured by their abuser or threatened with more violence should they pursue charges.

The LAPD’s approach to this seems head-in-the-sand. It will probably have no consequences for Chris Rock and leave no damage, professionally or physically (at least he didn’t seem too badly hurt). But victims of domestic abuse are never so fortunate: their circumstances dictate that they often imperil their own safety by giving evidence. The LAPD’s decision will not inspire them.

*[Ellis Cashmore is the author of “.”]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Now, with the war in Ukraine, that soft power is facing a major crisis. Since Russia launched its invasion at the end of February, many ballet performances are being canceled around the world: The Bolshoi Ballet’s summer season at London’s , “Swan Lake” by the Royal Moscow Ballet at the Helix Theatre in Dublin and concerts by the Vienna Philharmonic — led by the Russian conductor and Vladimir Putin’s supporter, Valery Gergiev — at the Carnegie Hall in New York have all been called off. 

The Danish minister of culture, Ane Halsboe-Jorgensen, suggested the Musikhuset Aarhus, Scandinavia’s largest concert hall, should Russian National Ballet’s performance. The UK tour by the Russian State Ballet of Siberia has been as a stand against the war. 

Because of the conflict, former dancers and Ukraine natives Darya Fedotova and Sergiy Mykhaylov changed the name of their school from the  to the International Ballet of Florida. , in Newcastle, canceled the screenings of Bolshoi Ballet’s “Swan Lake” and “Pharaoh’s Daughter.” A Japanese ballerina with the Russian Ballet Theater in Moscow, , is dancing for peace during a tour in the US, but a restaurant refused to serve lunch to the cast when they learned they were from Russia. 

Business Card

The boycotts may just be starting, bringing financial loss to ��ܲ�������’s cultural establishment amid already crippling economic sanctions. But the damage to Russian �����������’s soft power can be even more everlasting, taking years to recover. After all, soft power is the ability to seduce rather than coerce, strengthen a nation’s image abroad and thus enhance cultural and diplomatic relations as well as tourism. It takes years, even decades, to cultivate the tradition, like Hollywood in the US, the carnival in Brazil and MAG (manga, anime, games) culture in Japan.

Both the USSR and Russia could never compete with truly global pop-culture exports emanating from America. There were no music icons to rival Michael Jackson, blockbusters like “Star Wars” or TV stars like Oprah. The country produced incredible cultural products, especially when it came to film. Sergei Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin” (1925), Andrei Tarkovsky’s sci-fi “Solaris” (1972) and Alexander Sokurov’s “Russian Arc” (2002) are masterpieces that earned Russian cinema a place in every art book and class around the world, but they were far from being international hits. 

Russian composers like Igor Stravinski and Alexander Scriabin, and writers such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Lev Tolstoy, similarly occupy high positions in the world’s literary and music canons but can hardly be described as widely popular, especially in the Anglophone cultural sphere. 

Ballet, on the other hand, has always been a lucrative export for Russia. In her  “Swans of the Kremlin,” Christina Ezrahi looks at how Russian ballet, whose tradition stretches back to the imperial court as a celebration of the Romanov dynasty, with ballet schools established during the rule of in the 18^th century, has grabbed the world’s attention. Following the 1917 revolution, luckily convinced Vladimir Lenin not to destroy the Bolshoi because peasants and workers flocked to the theater despite the chaos of the civil war years. 

Art and Politics

Although theaters like the Bolshoi may appear as a microcosmos of liberal art, in ��ܲ�������’s history, ballet has always had close ties with political power. Stalin was an opera aficionado and used to arrive at the Bolshoi by a secret entrance and watch alone. After the signing of the non-aggression pact with Germany in 1939, he took Hitler’s foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to see  dance at the Bolshoi. 

During the Soviet era, ballet served as a visiting card for Russian diplomats. In “American-Soviet Cultural Diplomacy,” Cadra Peterson McDaniel  how the Kremlin used the Bolshoi ballets as a means of cultural exchange, weaving communist ideas such as collective ownership of the means of production and the elimination of income inequality discretely into the storylines along with pre-revolutionary dance aesthetics during 1959 US tour.

Other artists were also crucial for projecting Soviet cultural soft power at the time, like the world-famous cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife, the opera singer Galina Vishnevskaya. But they faced tough competition from Tchaikovsky’s ballet hits like “The Nutcracker.” 

Ballet served a purpose during the putsch of 1991, which signaled the beginning of the Soviet Union’s collapse, when instead of announcing the attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, “Swan Lake” was  on national television on a loop. The export of Russian ballet increased during the  as the Bolshoi had to tour to compensate for an unstable economy while enjoying the opening up of the country after decades behind the Iron Curtain. 

President Putin’s two decades in power may have allowed for economic recovery, but Russian ballet suffered from scandals like the acid attack on Bolshoi’s artistic director Sergei Filin in 2013. The scandal garnered the attention of the international media following stories about the at the Bolshoi and its close affiliation with the Kremlin, tarnishing Russian �����������’s appeal.

The connection between Bolshoi and the power structure in Russia is so vivid that artists were directly affected as the result of the invasion of Ukraine. , the chief conductor at the Bolshoi, resigned after coming under pressure to condemn Russian actions. Fearing that musicians are becoming “victims of so-called ‘cancel culture,’” he worried he “will be soon asked to choose between Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy.” Two , Brazilian David Motta Soares and Italian Jacopo Tissi, also resigned, citing solidarity with Ukraine. 

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As someone who appears to favor the outdoors, sports and guns, it’s unlikely that President Putin will see ballet as a priority to be shielded from Western sanctions and boycotts. There is, in fact, little he could do, especially given the current restrictions on travel in and out of the country. There is, of course, the question of whether boycotts of the arts are justified, considering that other countries have a history of political intervention, like China in Hong Kong or the US in Iraq, but their cultural products were not banned from movie theaters and art exhibitions. 

It may find itself caught in another historic moment, but Russian ballet’s cultural soft power survived the tsars, revolutions, famine, dictatorship and the fall of empires. In the end, dance will likely outlast autocracy.  

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Jackson, by contrast, has, since his death, suffered reputational harm over child sexual abuse allegations, but not so irreparable that he — or, more accurately, his character — has been dragged down from the showbusiness pantheon.

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Earlier in February, a musical devoted to his life and work opened at the Neil Simon Theatre on Broadway. “It’s unfortunate he is not alive to witness the flawless production of MJ the Musical, a model biographical musical,” wrote Ayanna Prescod, of the , who awarded the show the maximum five stars. The review was typical of others, which range from positive to rhapsodic.

Only one reviewer, of Variety, had the temerity to raise questions about Jackson’s sexual abuse allegations with cast members. He was shown the door. “T��� show’s backers were quick to shut down any mention of the scandal that still clouds the King of Pop’s life and legacy at the red-carpet premiere of the musical,” wrote Appler.

The Afterlife   

When Jackson died in 2009, there was an immediate upturn in the already formidable sales of his records and a period when some radio stations played nothing but his music, whether as a solo artist or as part of the Jackson 5. Even after death, he continued to mesmerize audiences. He was rarely out of the news and even appeared as a in 2014.

But in 2019, “,” a 4-hour documentary focusing on two men, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, offered a startling account of Jackson, not as the world’s onetime most popular entertainer but as a sexual predator. The testimonies of the two men were delivered with such conviction that they were accepted by many as credible. There was no headlong rush from others claiming to be victims. Robson and Safechuck were known to be close to Jackson, and their claims were detailed enough to persuade many to reevaluate the singer and, by implication, his legacy.

For a while, it appeared that Jackson’s afterlife would end abruptly. Less than a year before, the arrest of Harvey Weinstein, a powerful Hollywood producer, had initiated a dramatic cultural mood shift. The #MeToo movement surged to prominence and, in the years since, every man or woman accused of untoward behavior, including verbal harassment, was castigated. Often, their contracts were revoked and their overall status downgraded — in other words, canceled.

Yet Jackson’s stature, though affected, has not suffered comparably. He was the highest-earning dead entertainer in the world for eight straight years, from 2013 through 2020, slipping to number three with $75 million made last year, according to Forbes. His music continues to sell. His estate has many other income streams, including Cirque du Soleil’s show, “,” a spectacular success in Las Vegas. Michael Jackson is still with us, shows no signs of going away and most decidedly has not been canceled. Why?

Don’t Speak Ill of the Dead

Obviously, many people just don’t believe Jackson’s accusers, and some assume they are . Jackson is unable to defend himself and thus any allegation is destined to remain only that — an allegation, a claim, an assertion or a contention. The supporting evidence, however direct and believable, derives from the remembrances of two men, both of whom were privy to Jackson’s life but whose statements can’t be refuted by the accused.

This is further complicated by the time lapse between his death and the revelations. Jackson had been subject to rumors and accusations, some of which had traction enough to land him in court. But he was in 2005 and died an innocent man, legally speaking. Had he been alive at the time of the 2019 documentary, Jackson would almost certainly have denied all allegations and set a legal team on the case.

In view of the way he handled the media during his life, he would probably have appeared on television and in other media, issuing his own version of events. He would probably have pointed out that both men were treated kindly as friends and, for reasons best known to them, never uttered their complaints during his lifetime.

It sounds crass, but being dead does not guarantee innocence. British TV personality Jimmy Savile was enormously popular in his life and raised about £40 million with his charitable work. After he died in 2011, Pandora’s box was prised open: All manner of people advanced accusations of misconduct, including having sex with the corpses of dead patients at a hospital mortuary. The weight of testimony convinced all but Savile’s family and most devoted fans of his guilt. While he was well-liked, Savile was not in Jackson’s class. The King of Pop’s approval was global and worshipful. Correction: It is global and worshipful.

Don’t Trust the Media

Another factor in Jackson’s continued popularity is a lack of trust in the media. Research that 56% of Americans agreed with the statement, “Journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations.”

The rise of Donald Trump, the COVID-19 pandemic and the circulation of what many now call fake news have made people distrustful of mainstream media. Even if we leave aside the bizarre beliefs that Jackson is still alive — and probably sharing a home with Elvis, Marilyn Monroe and JFK — there are many who are likely to question practically everything they learn from the media about the star.

It’s no longer necessary to be a conspiracy theorist to be a cynic. Questioning newspapers and TV news is commonplace, so the fact that the seemingly incriminating documentary was shown on mainstream channels — Channel 4 in the UK, HBO in the US — no longer validates its authenticity.

Don’t Forget That He Was Black

Bill Cosby, a once-legendary black comedian, has been well and truly canceled. But Cosby was tried in court and, after initially being released after a jury failed to reach a decision, was later convicted, sentenced and spent over two years in prison before the conviction for sexual assault was overturned. He is finished as both an entertainer and the educator he seemed to aspire to be. He is now 84.

Whoopi Goldberg’s recent that the Holocaust wasn’t about race was baffling and surprising, coming as it did from an African American. An apology followed, along with a two-week suspension from the ABC show, “T��� View.” Cancelation looks likely. Her opinions are often provocative and often well-intended. But, in this instance, she simply sounded foolish and ignorant. It’s unlikely we’ll hear much from her in the future.

Jackson was also black. On occasion, he himself to be so. But his ever-changing appearance persuaded some that he was blanching his skin and undergoing plastic surgery in an effort to disguise his blackness. Jackson himself would have objected to this. On more than one occasion, he pointed out that he suffered from vitiligo, a condition that affects skin pigmentation.

Jackson’s stalwart supporters would probably refer to the historical cases of Mike Tyson, O.J. Simpson and Clarence Thomas, all of whom were conspicuously successful black men whose careers or reputations were damaged after high-profile cases. Jackson, they could argue, is part of a tradition in which black men who rise to the top are brought back to earth, as if to remind white America of the self-destructive element in black males.

It would be naïve to assume Jackson’s blackness has not been a factor in deterring cancelation. In Cosby’s case, a court of law considered evidence of his wrongdoing. Goldberg’s contretemps was made in full view of millions. There is no definitive proof of Jackson’s alleged transgressions, so anyone or any organization that makes decisions on his culpability is forced to conjecture. Much as they may deny the conjectures are affected by Jackson’s blackness, who would believe it?

Awareness of the unequal treatment and abuse of women has been complemented by the recognition that black people have, over the decades, been suppressed and, on many occasions, brutalized. They’ve been unheard and underrepresented in many spheres of social activity, though not always in entertainment. The revival of the shibboleth of white privilege that was first aired in the 1980s served notice that castigation of blacks for deeds that might have gone unpunished if performed by whites has been commonplace.

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This doesn’t suggest Jackson has been granted a free pass. Heaven knows, he has plenty of vilifiers. Yet there is understandable caution. This prompts an awkward question: Are we less likely to condemn people of color for suspected or actual transgressions? And perhaps an even more awkward question: Does “we” usually mean “whites”? The legal precept of innocent until proved guilty has been reversed in recent years, allegation alone becoming potent enough to denounce celebrities and annul their careers.

Jackson has his detractors, for sure. Yet somehow his legacy actually grows in stature. Thirteen years after his death, he continues to fascinate just as he did in life. It seems impossible to harm or damage his — what shall I call it? — revenant. There is probably no other celebrity, living or dead, so insusceptible to cancelation.

*[Ellis Cashmore’s “” will be published by Bloomsbury in May.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The second was the legitimization of voyeurism. What was at one time regarded as an unwholesome and indecent fascination with other people’s affairs is now considered conventional. In fact, the more transgressive outlook is to be nonchalant.

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The new Disney+ mini series “” dramatizes an infamous leaked sex tape ���Ա��DZ������Բ��� and her then-husband, Tommy Lee, who still plays drums for the band Mötley Crüe. Anderson was starring in Baywatch, a TV series that ran from 1989 until 2001. The show was about a team of lifeguards on a Los Angeles beach and became a showcase for Anderson, who featured in the series from 1992 to 1997 before moving into film.

Anderson married Lee in March 1995. It seemed a marriage made in heaven. Well, in Cancún, Mexico, to be exact. The newlyweds were sensibly undressed in beachwear, Lee’s splendidly inked torso in full view of the media. By the end of the year, Anderson announced she was pregnant. But heaven had an unwanted visitor.

Private Lives Made Public

There were rumors about a videotape of Anderson and Lee in sexual congress. That such a thing existed surprised no one. The couple seemed blissfully loved-up. But what surprised many was that people were discussing it as if it were a public event. It later became known that the videotape had been stolen from the couple’s California home while they were honeymooning and that the thief, a dissatisfied contractor who had done some work at their house, was seeking to release the tape in an instance of what we’d now call revenge porn.

This was the mid-1990s, remember. Today, he would have immediately uploaded the recording and gotten millions of views within minutes.

Anderson and Lee were, it seems, genuinely upset by the prospect of having their private lives turned inside out. Neither had anything to gain. Lee’s band had six successful albums, and Anderson was borderline iconic, her signature red swimsuit emblematic of the time. Had the tape gained a wider audience, NBC, the TV network, would probably have dropped her from the show amid protest from their advertisers and several indignant church organizations.

For comparison, in predigital 1988, Rob Lowe’s career temporarily cratered after the media got hold of a recording of the actor in a threesome with a woman who was later revealed to be 16 and another woman in her 20s. After a 10-year absence, Lowe made a Lazarus-like recovery when he got a part in “The West Wing,” a show that restored him. Of course, Lowe was a man.

Lowe’s recovery is one way of imagining how Anderson’s career might have gone had the tape been quickly and widely distributed. Another way is to remember Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” of 2004. She had several contracts canceled after a tumult of complaints about her appearance in the halftime Super Bowl show in which she exposed her breast. Her partner in the stunt was Justin Timberlake, whose career suffered no comparably ill effects.

Also in 2004, a similar sex tape featuring Paris Hilton and her partner Rick Salomon had the opposite effect. It propelled Hilton to global notoriety and consequent stardom. Hilton was a woman, but, unlike Anderson or Jackson, she did not have a successful career in show business. Salomon was relatively unknown and, perhaps paradoxically, later married — and I am not making this up — Anderson (though only for a year).

A sex tape also functioned as a career propellant for Hilton’s one-time friend, Kim Kardashian. Again, unlike Anderson, but a lot like Hilton, Kardashian had no known acting or singing talents and belonged to what was then the emerging class of celebrities who were well-known for being followed avariciously by the media. Kardashian existed as an internet life force and a presence in a reality TV series. Halfway through the first decade of the century, this was sufficient to guarantee her a spot high on the A-list.

There were several differences between Anderson’s experience and those of Hilton and Kardashian. For a start, audiences already knew Anderson and realized she needed a sex tape circulating about as much as a funeral wreath. Hilton and Kardashian, on the other hand, were best known as socialites, people who dress well, inhabit fashionable environments and are fond of premieres. All three women acted as if they were affronted, outraged and embarrassed by the leaks, but only one of them sounded credible.

Has Porn Lost Its Appeal?

There was another big difference. When Anderson’s tape appeared, the internet was still in its infancy and without YouTube, which launched in 2005, there was no obvious conduit for publishing. Consent and exploitation may sound old-fashioned today, but, in the 1990s, they were still relevant. Even by the early 21st century, the lack of online regulation had not been realized as the major problem it later became.

Kardashian herself stress-tested the internet’s limits in 2016 when she posted , her modesty protected only by censor bars. In the same year, launched an online platform specializing in what was then seen as risqué material. Its majority owner Leo Radvinsky’s background was in porn. It’s now one of the fastest-growing , according to Ofcom, second only to Pornhub for streaming this type of erotica.

Tumblr appeared to buck the trend when it banned adult content in late 2018. Its traffic dropped and it was sold a year later for a modest $3 million, having been at $1.1 billion in 2013.

What about us? Did we change too? Our capacity to respond, appreciate or be repelled by aesthetic influences is not fixed. Perhaps we were more likely to be offended or shocked when the Anderson tape became available, less so by the later exposures and hardly at all by OnlyFans’ output. Porn has largely lost some of its power to thrill or disgust. Our sensitivity to images of others having sex couldn’t have remained unchanged with so much of it readily available online, could it?

There �󲹲���’t really been anything shocking since the original Kardashian transmission. Can you imagine if anyone tried it today? Audiences would hardly be able to contain their indifference. With the possible exception of Britain’s seemingly indestructible, multi-purpose , surely no one would attempt it, for fear of being ridiculed.

Our fascination with what other people do in their not-yet-made-public moments is what drove reality TV to its preeminent position as the century’s most popular genre, and I think its form, style and subject matter justify calling it a genre. Maybe this prurient streak has always been in us, though I’m inclined to believe the captivation was animated and encouraged by TV’s ingenuity; by coaxing drama from documentary, TV cameras made privacy entertaining. Every one of us became eavesdroppers without any of the guilt typically associated with being a peeping tom. Maybe that’s why watching sex tapes, or their digital equivalents, isn’t so exciting anymore. Those pangs of conscience were probably part of the frisson.

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Like anything else that’s banned, the prohibition is part of porn’s appeal. The instant you make it legit, you reduce its attraction. While #MeToo and other movements that fight the objectification and degradation of women would find this irony hard to accept, there is logic in rinsing off porn’s dirt and making it a bit more respectable — and a bit less stimulating.

Anderson, now 54, would probably not accept any responsibility for the growth or sanitization of porn and almost certainly not want her legendary tape viewed again after nearly three decades. And if it were, it would register only historical interest rather than titillation. But in the 1990s, Anderson was riding the zeitgeist, however unwittingly and, perhaps, with help from her private misfortune, changing its direction.

*[Ellis Cashmore’s “” will be published by Bloomsbury in May.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The reason for this curious phenomenon, similar to what occurred for the movie “Bonnie and Clyde” 55 years ago, lies in the fact that, while capturing the mood of an epoch focused on the very real possibility of the collapse of civilization, as a work of art, the movie is visibly flawed in a number of ways that no professional critic could ignore. Given McKay’s track record and the star power he brought together in the case, the critics felt that the film failed to live up to its advertised promise. 

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When the viewership statistics began appearing, the disconnect between critical assessment and the public’s appreciation became flagrant. “Don’t Look Up” the record for Netflix viewership for a new release. The gap in judgment between the critics and the public itself became a topic for discussion in the media. 

Some may see this as a demonstration of the inexorable loss of prestige of movie reviewers in the era of social media. Once respected pillars of popular journalism, most consumers now see cinema critics as irrelevant. This has something to do with the ambiguity of cinema itself. Traditionally consumed in a dark movie theater as a collective experience amid a responsive audience, most people now watch their movies at home on television. The distinction between movies and TV has become increasingly blurred. 

Getting Talked About

No one doubts that audiences were drawn to the film principally through the appeal of the star-studded cast featuring, among others, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Ariana Grande and Cate Blanchett. But there may be another cultural factor that complements the roster of stars: the power of the traditional and non-traditional news media. That includes the uncountable bevy of pundits on social media. Commentary on the news has become another form of entertainment, thanks in part to its much lower production costs than Hollywood movies. 

Once the critics had done their job, most outlets in the US treated the film’s release and reception as a news story in and of itself. The media began talking about the movie, no longer in terms of its artistic success or failure, but as a kind of psy-op designed to sensitize the public to the urgency of combating climate change. Anyone with access to Netflix felt obliged to watch it. 

By becoming not only a much-viewed work of entertainment but more significantly an object of endless discussion in the media, the movie achieved the director’s real goal: getting talked about. The attention the media is still giving “Don’t Look Up,” weeks after its Netflix release, reveals more about the state of US culture than it does about the movie itself. It highlights the paradox, specifically targeted in the movie’s satire, of the public’s addiction to the media’s blather and its growing distrust of all institutions, including the very media to which the public is addicted.

Were the Critics Right?

In the case of “Bonnie and Clyde,” released in 1967, Newsweek’s Joe Morgenstern “initially panned [the movie], only to come back and proclaim it (wisely) a great movie,” to David Ansen (a later Newsweek critic and a friend of mine). Morgenstern penned a second review celebrating Penn’s accomplishment. I’m not sure I agree with David about it being a great movie, but “Bonnie and Clyde” became such a popular success that Morgenstern had to sit down and rethink the cultural conditions that made it, if not a great movie, then at least a movie for its time. And what a time it was! 1967 is remembered as the year of the “summer of love,” a propitious moment for any cultural artifact that could be perceived as being “for its time.” More significantly, “Bonnie and Clyde” became a trend-setter for the next generation of filmmakers.

Can we compare our era with the ebullition of the sixties? Can “Don’t Look Up” pretend to be the “Bonnie and Clyde” of the 21^st century? Because of COVID-19 and Donald Trump, 2020 and 2021 may be remembered by future generations as two years as significant as 1967, 1968 (assassinations of MLK and RFK, “mai 68”) or 1969 (Woodstock). Then again, future generations may simply remember these two years as a period of gradual but certain decline marked by a debilitating indifference to the impending crisis that “Don’t Look Up” wants us to respond to.

McKay intended “Don’t Look Up” to be a satire. The mood of the movie is clearly satirical, but some critics noticed that the plot and characterization easily broke the mood, slipping dangerously at times into parody. True satire treats a serious subject seriously before introducing the elements of ironic perspective that subtly or unsubtly undermine the characters’ pretention of seriousness. For a director, this means controlling both the timing and the gap between the sober and the comic.

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Hollywood satire, which always employs humor, has traditionally fallen into two broad categories: dramatic and comic. The Marx Brothers were specialized in comic satire. It achieved its effects through immediate exaggeration of recognizable social behaviors, almost always including the relationship between a woman from the American upper class (Margaret Dumont), an upstart male gold digger (Groucho) and a penniless southern European immigrant trying to make it in WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) America (Chico). 

In this Marxian (rather than Marxist) world, the three brothers in real life represented three different types of cultural marginality. Chico’s character comprised both Italians and Jews; the mute Harpo represented an extreme form of marginality, combining the handicapped and the poet (and natural musician). He even had his place in the poor black community (Harpo’s “” in “A Day at the Races”). All three of the Marx Brothers embodied, in contrasting ways, characters bent on destabilizing a self-satisfied majority that could neither understand them nor integrate them into their putative order. The very existence of the three non-conformists challenged the legitimacy of the institutions they interacted with. 

Comic vs. Dramatic Satire 

The Marx Brothers may have produced raucous comedy intended to provoke non-stop laughter, but their humor was built on a foundation of social satire. Audiences didn’t necessarily think about it in that way. They didn’t exit the movie theater reflecting deeply on the presumption, injustice and cluelessness of the ruling class. But the worlds and situations the Marx Brothers interacted with skewered a range of institutional targets: political and military (“Duck Soup”), academic (“Horsefeathers”), the arts (“A Night at the Opera”) or even medical (“A Day at the Races”). In so doing, they subtly altered the audience’s perception of the class system in the US and some of its most prestigious institutions. All of these movies appeared during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Like Jonathan Swift in “Gulliver’s Travels,” the Marx Brothers created parallel worlds, clearly differentiated from our own, in which recognizable social and transactional behavior became exaggerated to the point of producing immediate comic effects that highlighted the illogic and even injustice of the real world. Like the Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields and Laurel and Hardy produced variants on the same principle of comic satire. Each created and gave life to distinctive marginal personalities, at odds with respectable society and usually defeated by it. 

Dramatic satire has in common with comic satire the aim of making its points by producing laughter. But it follows a radically different set of rules. Instead of throwing absurdity straight in the face of the audience by staging wildly exaggerated behavior designed to challenge and upset the veneer of seriousness attributed to what is presented as “normal society,” dramatic satire first takes the time to create the audience’s belief in a realistic situation that will later be challenged by an unexpected event or external force. It turns around an anomaly that erupts to provoke reactions from a range of characters unprepared for the surprise. 

In other words, dramatic satire gives deadpan seriousness a head start. It is the gap between the nature of the anomalous event and the quality of the characters’ reaction that produces what comes across not as the pretext for a joke, but as unintentional humor. In the history of cinema, the most perfect example of dramatic satire — and the most appropriate to compare with “Don’t Look Up” — is Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film, “Dr. Strangelove” or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” the archetypal doomsday satire. McKay was acutely aware of that when he made “Don’t Look Up.”&�Բ�����;

Kubrick’s drama literally turns around the plot device of a Soviet “doomsday machine” that, if triggered, will destroy human life on the surface of the earth. The plot begins in total seriousness, like any dramatic movie. The key to its brilliance as satire is the gradual pace at which the exaggerated behavior of some of the characters unfolds. Playing their designated roles to the hilt, the politicians and generals become overtly comic when they go one step (and sometimes two or three) beyond what is reasonable. 

There are several points in the first third of the movie where it becomes apparent to the viewer that they are watching a comedy. But this happens gradually and only through significant, but credible details in the dialogue, such as Brigadier General Ripper’s obsession with “purity of essence.” As the plot develops, at key moments, the comedy can erupt at the highest level of absurdity, as when President Muffley : “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here, this is the war room.” Such absurdly comic moments emerge logically, without ever undermining the fundamentally dramatic plot structure as it builds toward a final crescendo that will be followed by an instantaneous release.

Adam McKay’s Compromise

McKay’s script attempts to respect the same principle of dramatic satire as “Dr. Strangelove.” The initial scenes reveal the introverted scientist (DiCaprio) and his research student (Lawrence) making the disquieting discovery of a comet certain to strike the earth within half a year. The impending catastrophe is fully confirmed before the audience can get a reasonable feeling for the characters. That is the movie’s first glaring flaw. The apparent tension seems unjustified. The audience doesn’t yet care enough about the characters to start seriously worrying about whether they or the earth they (and we) stand on will survive the comet’s assault. 

A quick transition leads us to the corridors of the White House in Washington, DC. We spend some time with the troubled scientists who are kept waiting before meeting President Orlean (Meryl Streep). She turns out to be a clever composite of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. There’s even a gratuitous hint of a link to Barack Obama, the secret smoker.

The characters in “Dr. Strangelove” are each given the time to appear as reasonable, conscientious, professionally competent human beings. Their irrationality and moral failure only appear as they attempt to deal with the impending threat. In contrast, “Don’t Look Up’s” president and colleagues are simply the embodiments of the algorithm that now dominates US politics, aimed at winning elections. This is where the mood of the movie moves from satire to parody.

We then move to New York where a serious news bureau modeled after The New York Times and a daytime TV interview show demonstrate the same algorithmic principle predicated this time essentially on optimizing ratings. At this point, the spectacle of increasingly trivial behavior by all the establishment parties definitively takes over.

What follows is a dynamically edited series of acts and scenes that riff on the gap between the serious intentions of the scientists and the endless venality and psychological triviality of politicians, entertainers and techno-capitalists. The specific critique of institutions and the media is usually on target. But it too often appears to be an exercise of making fun of what is visible every day in our media simply by duplicating its most consistent behaviors.

The Difficulty of Satirizing Hyperreality

In other words, McKay’s parody suffers from the already hyperreal nature of what it seeks to critique. The culture it puts on display, already accessible in today’s media, is too recognizable and predictable, in a certain sense, too true to (hyperreal) life. It may be a thankless task to try for comic effect by further exaggerating anything in the real world that is already so exaggerated in its triviality and cynical efficiency that on its own it tends to be laughable. McKay ends up faithfully reproducing a world that, through its media, endlessly parodies itself.

That may be what made the critics feel uncomfortable. The actors do their best to parody what it already a parody. The movie rarely achieves the sense of queasy discomfort satire normally seeks to inspire. “Dr. Strangelove” does so by slowly building that discomfort to a fever pitch. Kubrick shows his characters thinking, strategizing, trying to adapt to an unusual situation. McKay’s characters too often appear to be reading from a script. We never get the impression that they are grappling with anything. Instead, they are playing out their algorithmically determined roles.

Perhaps the real lesson, worth being talked about, from “Don’t Look Up” is that in a world so dominated by the hyperreality projected not just by our media but also by our politicians, technology gurus and even academics, true satire is no longer possible. When the media reaches the level of superficiality and sheer venality that it has achieved today, as revealed in every scene of “Don’t Look Up,” the link to reality in today’s culture is too tenuous for effective political satire to be produced.

Hollywood Satire and Contemporary History

Over the past century, Hollywood has produced many successful and indeed unforgettable satires. They fall into a variety of styles and with a wide range of comic techniques. “Duck Soup” (Marx Brothers), “Blazing Saddles” (Mel Brooks), “M*A*S*H”(Robert Altman), “Mulholland Drive” (David Lynch) and many others stand as great Hollywood satires that achieved their effect by creating largely unbelievable frameworks that become believable by virtue of the director’s control of exaggeration, coupled with the capacity to build a coherent intricacy of contrasts and conflicts in the plotting.

“Don’t Look Up” never quite makes up its mind about whether it wishes to embrace “Dr. Strangelove’s” focused drama or the liberated wackiness of Mel Brooks. That may be why the critics found it to be an unsatisfying hybrid. In its defense, however, we should recognize — and future generations should note — that it does stand as an effective parody of the most predictable behavior of public figures incapable of responding to an existential crisis because they have been programmed according to a different set of algorithmic rules. For that reason, the film should be considered a resounding success. It has raised in the public forum the most troubling question concerning the climate crisis: that even our awareness of it cannot serve to find a solution. The system we are trying to save is built to resist anyone’s saving it.

For all its cinematic quality, brilliant humor and critical success, “Dr. Strangelove” had no immediate impact on the arms race. Still, it is worth noting that when Ronald Reagan was elected president, sixteen years after the movie’s release, as he was making the rounds of the federal government’s , upon visiting the Pentagon he “asked the chief of staff to show him the war room of Dr. Strangelove.” The Hollywood actor, who had spent plenty of time in his earlier career in sound studios, believed Kubrick’s set was real. 

Reagan’s public anti-communist philosophy was not radically different from Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper’s as detailed in “Dr. Strangelove.” The man who, before his election, “had argued that the United States was falling behind the Soviets in the nuclear competition” personally initiated the negotiations that led to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (), “the first treaty that required U.S. and Soviet/Russian reductions of strategic nuclear weapons.” Could it have been Reagan’s memory of the lessons of “Dr. Strangelove” that ultimately guided him towards that decision?

A Tale of Two Cold Wars

The original Cold War nuclear arms race Kubrick denounced in his movie is still going on to this day. Perhaps more than ever it can be triggered in a heartbeat. In contrast, climate change promises a slow agony, whose groans may already be discernible. America’s current president, Joe Biden, says he wants to rein it in but seems incapable of exercising any real leadership to achieve that goal. 

At the time Kubrick was shooting “Dr. Strangelove,” John F. Kennedy was still president. In his first year of office, JFK called for the of nuclear weapons “before they abolish us.” In the summer of 1963, he initiated the first nuclear test ban . Four months later, he was successfully “abolished” himself in the streets of Dallas.

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It appears clear now that, willingly or unwillingly, President Biden will accomplish little to limit the effects of climate change. Seeking to raise the stakes of the US rivalry with China and increasing the pressure on Russia over Ukraine in a spirit that sometimes resembles a new cold war, he has also made it abundantly clear that he has no intention of banishing nuclear weapons. In the first week of 2022, the White House affirmed the that “nuclear weapons—for as long as they continue to exist—should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression, and prevent war.”

The first cold war ended in 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union. The lesson of “Dr. Strangelove” no longer lives in any president’s memory. But can we suppose or perhaps even hope that a future president who happened to watch “Don’t Look Up” at the end of 2021 will, like Reagan, remember its message and dare, even decades later, to take some kind of serious action to address it? That seems unlikely. As President Orlean pointed out, unless the end of the world is scheduled to take place before the next presidential or midterm election, there are more important things to attend to.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Harry and Meghan: In Pursuit of Wealth and Luxury

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The epoch-defining “The Oprah Winfrey Show” ran for 25 years, during which the host used her growing reputation not so much to change people’s lives but to instruct them to change their own lives. Like a preacher using a parable to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson, Oprah drew on her own experiences and opened herself up to inspection, encouraging her followers to accept responsibility for themselves and to self-actualize — fulfill their own talent and potential.

It was a very different message to that preached by civil rights leaders earlier in the 20^th century. Oprah relied less on the solidarity and potency of collective effort, and more on individual determination and enterprise.

Philosophy of Individualism

Oprah’s philosophy of individualism chimed well with the changing times. Her show arrived at the start of the third decade after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, and the less portentous 1965 Voting Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination in voting. The first post-civil rights decade had been tumultuous, with riots in many major cities serving notice that the technical abolition of racism had done little to extirpate it from American society. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968 catalyzed further unrest.

Well into the 1970s, the dust seemed to settle, and conspicuously successful black figures emerged as if living evidence that it was possible to overcome what once seemed insurmountable obstacles. Bill Cosby featured in the country’s most popular sitcom, “T��� Cosby Show.” Eddie Murphy’s 1984 “Beverly Hills Cop” established him as one of the world’s most bankable film stars. Michael Jackson was arguably the leading entertainer in the world. Two months after Oprah’s show launched, Mike Tyson won boxing’s heavyweight world championship to become probably the most heralded athlete since Muhammad Ali. Michael Jordan was on his way toward his cultural apogee.

Black celebrities of the 1980s were perfect emblems of the Reagan era, a period associated with low taxes, laissez-faire markets, entrepreneurial initiative and individualism. Oprah and the other glittering African Americans were conspicuous reminders of the success of black Americans, who had persevered and refused to allow the country’s enduring racism to derail their destinies. Oprah was, as one writer sarcastically , “an Horatio Alger for our times,” referring to the 19^th-century novelist whose tales imparted the message that hard work can triumph over poverty.

This didn’t mean Oprah avoided the problem of racism. Within months of going national, Oprah ventured into dangerous territory by featuring residents of . There had been no black residents in Forsyth since 1912, when three black men — all of whom were subsequently hanged — allegedly raped a white teenager, prompting whites to burn down black churches and schools. Oprah asked questions of white people who openly refused to welcome black people into the. “We have a right to have a white community,” said one woman. Unwaveringly, Oprah persisted with her questioning.

Mischief and Provocation

Oprah had few equals when it came to mischief and provocation. No social or personal issue was off-limits: as well as racism, she tackled homophobia, addiction, infidelity and child abuse — sometimes drawing on her own experience as a victim. It was a new type of show. She took aim at figures from entertainment, but from politics too and from big business. No one was spared.

Yet her partisanship never clashed with her fundamental idea that people should help themselves. If they grumbled and complained about the world, they would get nowhere. If they relied on others, they would end up where they started. In this sense, she aligned herself with the conservative writer who believed that, by the end of the 1980s, racism in America was not so much a raging lion that needed to be slain but more an annoying bee that could be swatted.

It made sense to Steele — and perhaps Oprah — not to waste energy on the collective effort fighting a beast that had already been tamed. Instead, African Americans should focus on their own progress as individuals. For many, Oprah was and is a guru, her mantra being “Live Your Best Life.” Somehow, 35 years ago, she scented that this type of individualist ethos was filtering into the zeitgeist.

Oprah leveraged her influence to publish “O, The Oprah Magazine,” initiate a book club, play in film adaptations of Alice Walker’s “T��� Color Purple,” and Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” and not so much endorse Obama’s bid for the presidency as authenticate it. In fact, research indicated that 30% of voters in the 2008 election said they would be influenced by Winfrey, with half of those more likely to cast votes for the candidate she endorsed; coined it as the “Oprah factor.”

In 2008, Oprah announced plans to launch an eponymous television channel, the Oprah Winfrey Network, or OWN. Twenty years ago, the first university course based on her was launched at the University of Illinois: “Oprah Winfrey, the Tycoon” was the first of several to use Oprah “as a prism to get at the intersection of race, class and gender in the post-civil rights era,” as one tutor put it.

No one ever queried her sincerity. When she conducted interviews, there was emotional immediacy, but with open and honest mischief. Many of her interviews disclosed hitherto unknown aspects of her subject’s character. The in 2005 revealed the actor as a frenzied, perhaps hysterical figure. Michael Jackson in 1993 divulged experiences in his childhood that made audiences wonder how much effect they were having on his bizarre behavior later in life. More recently, in her interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Oprah, perhaps inadvertently, dragged into the light allegations of racism at the heart of the British monarchy.

Help Thyself

History will be kinder to Oprah than it has been to several other African Americans who were once admired but later reviled. The groundbreaking Bill Cosby was disgraced after sexual assault charges were brought against him (his conviction was overturned earlier this year.) Mike Tyson was imprisoned for rape in 1992 and served three of his 10-year sentence. Michael Jackson died in 1999 but was posthumously denounced after two men claimed to have been sexually abused by him as children. At 67, Oprah has taken criticism but emerged basically intact. She was even seriously discussed as a presidential candidate for a while after dropping hints in 2018 that she might run for office.

Oprah was once an entertainer. But she became a mogul, so her story is one of spectacular success. While she is emblematic, Oprah is hardly typical: Black women remain underrepresented in positions of power in both private and public sectors on either of the While Oprah herself might explain this as the result of a lack of confidence, ambition, self-esteem and support from peers, others might identify experiences of discrimination, stereotyping and more structural factors, such as disparities in the education system and the job market that have persisted over the decades. Oprah’s approach tends to downplay the impact of institutional barriers.

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Oprah �󲹲���’t tried to change society. She �󲹲���’t even tried to change human beings. She’s tried and succeeded in making people change themselves. Her gift was and is that she is neither a firebrand nor a demagogue. There is nothing other-worldly about her. She just insinuates herself into people’s lives by speaking plainly and truthfully without bombast or sham virtuousness. It has enabled her to change countless lives in ways even she probably doesn’t realize.

It’s doubtful if there has been anyone quite like her, recognized the world over just by her first name. Her power is all-pervasive; its effects are felt everywhere. If you think I exaggerate, think of someone, good or bad — a politician, a religious leader, an entertainer — who has influenced so many people and whose sway will surely extend beyond her lifetime.

*[Ellis Cashmore is the of “Kardashian Kulture: How Celebrities Changed Life in the 21st Century.”]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The Cosby Show on Trial

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The Huxtables were a fictional family at the center of a sitcom that dominated television ratings in the 1980s. The show was credited to its creator, executive producer and lead character, Bill Cosby, then 48, and approaching the peak of his immense popularity. In 1987, Cosby was the world’s top-earning entertainer, worth $57 million. But in April 2018, the 80-year-old was convicted on three counts of aggravated indecent assault and sentenced to three to 10 years for drugging and sexually assaulting a woman in 2004. He vowed to serve the full sentence rather than express remorse.

Last week, a court dramatically overturned Cosby’s conviction. The judges’ decision to “the ‘vast’ violation of due process” the defendant faced during the legal proceedings. It did not, however, rule that the sex crime for which Cosby was convicted did not take place. But the man once described as “America’s dad” was free after just over two years behind bars. His prosecution was determined to be unconstitutional: He can never be tried for the same offense again.

Cultural Impact

From the vantage point of today, it’s almost impossible to understand how extraordinarily popular, influential and pioneering Cosby once was. His fall from grace was more spectacular than other abrupt descents, such as those of O.J. Simpson, Tiger Woods, Mike Tyson or Lance Armstrong. Cosby wasn’t so much an entertainer as a savior. Martin Luther King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, his groundbreaking show “the most positive portrayal of black family life that has ever been broadcast.” The show could legitimately be said to have changed all subsequent programs featuring black artists.

Cosby’s cultural impact in the late 20^th century can scarcely be exaggerated and, while it wasn’t limited to television, “T��� Cosby Show” was unquestionably a gamechanger. Before 1967, when Cosby appeared in the secret agent drama “I Spy,” blacks were not allowed on US network television in straight roles, only comedies — and even then as clownish characters.

Cosby’s opus was different: He stuck with the conventions of nuclear family-based sitcoms with the father (played by Cosby himself), an obstetrician. They were a “normal,” well-to-do family who just happened to be black. And that was the subversive element of Cosby’s project. The Huxtables were described by Ebony magazine as “a Black family that TV hadn’t seen before,” meaning they weren’t dysfunctional or cartoon-like.

The show wasn’t without its who considered Cosby’s depiction unrealistic and misleading — the vast majority of African American families were decidedly not affluent. The implication here was that those blacks who did not live up to the Huxtables’ standard considered themselves failures. Related criticisms were also made about Oprah Winfrey. But for all the criticism, in the late 1980s, Cosby’s worst (known) offense was his too-good-to-be-trueness. He was nominated for the Grammys 15 times, winning nine and, over the course of his life, won 74 awards for his various contributions.

False Prophet

But a different kind of criticism came after Cosby wound down the show in 1994. Instead of settling into a comfortable retirement interspersed with a few TV ads for which he’d become celebrated, he morphed from the lovable, avuncular fellow to a curmudgeon who continually griped about the condition of African Americans. Remember, Cosby was for many a kind of moral guide, so when the funny man who told clean jokes and respected family values told African Americans what they were doing wrong, people listened. To climb out of the depths of poverty and shrug off the effects of racism, blacks needed to study more and make their mark as individuals. But Cosby didn’t blame racism, the remnants of segregation or the diehard bigotry of many whites. He blamed blacks themselves.

“T��� Atlantic” journalist Adam Serwer called him a “.” The description made sense: Cosby’s commitment to traditional values and his opposition to drastic changes made him a perfect proponent of conservatism, particularly as he had been a longtime advocate of civil rights. His image of a free-willed individual making their own way through the world was doctrinally spot on. But perhaps this is where his status as a popular entertainer actually worked against him.

Would Cosby have been emboldened to make his sometimes extreme pronouncements about the condition of black America had he not been as incomparably popular? For a period between 1984 and 1992, when his show ran, he had no peers. Everyone, save his academic critics, loved him and respected his colossal cultural contribution. He probably assumed he could say just about anything and get away with it, no matter how provocative and perhaps hurtful his comments seemed.

And there was something else. Dr. Martin Luther King, as well as presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy, were all subjects of scurrilous talk, much of it empty, about their sexual conduct. Allegations of sexual impropriety went with the territory, especially if the territory was the domain of clean-living family men with impeccable reputations. Cosby had previously dismissed or ignored them, although in one case, in 1997, it was discovered that he’d paid $100,000 over a period of two decades to a woman with whom he had a sexual relationship in 1975.

The woman claimed that she’d had his daughter, . When Jackson was 22, she threatened to sell her story to a tabloid unless Cosby paid her $40 million. She was convicted of extortion and sentenced to 26 years in prison. Jackson spent 14 months in prison, with two associates, before the decision was reversed and all three were released.

Cosby had been married since 1964. Would it have damaged his reputation were it known that Cosby had a brief extramarital relationship with a woman in the 1970s? Probably not much at the time: “T��� Cosby Show” didn’t air until 1984. Cosby disputed his paternity, but he may have thought it politic to support the child financially rather than risk any kind of publicity. A more charitable interpretation would be that he gladly funded the education of the daughter of a woman with whom had a relationship even if the child was not his own. Over the years, he was similarly benevolent to several hundred other young people. In 1997, the case had a different complexion: Cosby’s straight-living family man image took a hit, but he was probably due some forgiveness.

Sexual Assault

Had that been the only blemish on Cosby’s otherwise unspoiled reputation, he would have probably receded gradually in the popular imagination and been left to a peaceful retirement: a once popular and, in many ways, iconic entertainer who held strong views on how black people should progress and used his fame as leverage to promote them. Those views were out of sync with the approaches of most blacks, and he might have been quietly ignored had it not been for two people. The first was Andrea Constand, whom Cosby met in 2002 at Temple University where she managed the women’s basketball team. He was 64, she was 28.

Two years later, on Constand’s account, Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her at his home in Philadelphia. She reported this to the police. Cosby maintained the sex was consensual and the police decided not to press charges. Constand then sued for sexual battery and defamation, prompting Cosby to for $3.4 million after four days of deposition in 2006. Some other women went public with descriptions of their own experiences of drug-induced sex with Cosby, but, like Constand’s claims, they were treated, at least initially, much like other accusations against celebrities. Cosby’s reputation was left intact, and he repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Were it not for an unexpected denunciation from a second key person, the later years of Cosby’s life would have been different.

was a stand-up comic who criticized Cosby in his routine, urging his audience to google “Bill Cosby rape,” cautioning them that “It’s not funny.” Most of the claims fell outside the statute of limitations, though Constand’s did not. After this, nearly stepped forward to trigger a chain of events that led to a court case in which Cosby stood accused of sexual assault. The result of the trial in 2017 was a hung jury after six days of deliberation. The verdict was a mistrial: Cosby was then 79 and escaped a possible lengthy prison sentence. This was before the #MeToo movement arrived and relandscaped social culture. A retrial in April 2018 resulted in a guilty verdict and a prison sentence that has just been overturned.

Cosby is now a free octogenarian. He remains one of the most paradoxical public figures of the past half-century. Praised to high heaven by one generation, damned to hell by another. He can legitimately claim to have changed the way the world looked at black people — and not just black people on TV, either. Cosby forced everyone to refocus and see the kinds of racial stereotypes that had circulated for centuries as exactly what they were — crude distortions. Like every idol, he had feet part of iron, part of clay. In the 1980s, he was so revered, his rumored flaws were overlooked, but in the post-#MeToo world, Cosby’s wrongdoings were unforgivable. To them, his release will be a perversion of justice, yet others may see it as divine providence.

*[Ellis Cashmore is the author of “.”]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In late April, Anitta released her most expensive video for her new song, “.” She had one goal in mind: conquer the ears of the world. Her method was by reshaping a notorious Brazilian cultural soft power known as bossa nova.

The music video begins with clips of the singer dressed like a Hollywood star in 1950s Rio de Janeiro. Surrounded by thin, mostly white men, Anitta sings an English adaptation of the internationally famous “Girl From Ipanema,” which was released in 1962 by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes. The video then shows viewers the real Rio de Janeiro. A trap beat drops and our eyes shift to black people dancing in Piscinao de Ramos (Ramos’ Pool), an artificial beach created by the government in 2000 in the suburbs of Rio.

Bolsonaro’s Conservative Brazil?

For two years, Anitta was heavily criticized by fans and artists for not taking a public stance over Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s far-right president. During the 2018 election campaign, she was questioned about her absence in the #EleNao (#NotHim) movement against Bolsonaro. At the time, she that she was only 25 years old and had zero political knowledge.

Bolsonaro’s nationalist policies aim to bring back the beauty and glory of Brazil’s past. But the truth is that he is more known for his , homophobic and declarations from his time in the Chamber of Deputies. Last year, one of his most trusted colleagues, Damares Alves, the minister of human rights, family and women, acted to stop a legal on a 10-year-old girl, who became pregnant after being raped by her own uncle.

With Bolsonaro in power, Brazilians are currently living under a conservative administration. This is particularly reflected in the federal government’s cultural decisions. Bolsonaro’s government monitors exhibitions, music, films and TV shows and assesses if they align with the state’s view of family and religious values.

Anitta has finally posted statements on social media criticizing Bolsonaro’s administration. Yet none of her tweets are as powerful as the message her new video carries.

A Different Rio

“Hot girls, where I’m from, we don’t look like models,” she sings, with scantily clad women dancing on an artificial beach. The song puts an emphasis on women without silicone breasts showing off their bodies with cellulite. The video also shows black men putting cream on women to bleach their body hair, while others barbecue meat on the beach. Some couples even look like they’re almost having sex in the sea. This is a completely different Brazil from the country Bolsonaro wants to portray to the world.

Anitta’s video presents clips of the Rio suburb’s poverty, but in a funny and sexy way. The video focuses on the nostalgic past of a white Rio de Janeiro that never really existed, but whose image was created with the help of the most popular Brazilian rhythm of all time, bossa nova. Translated as “new wave,” this genre is a mix of jazz, African beats and samba.

In 1962, the historical debut at by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Joao Gilberto helped bring bossa nova to the world stage. In the same year, Tom Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes released “Garota de Ipanema” (Girl From Ipanema), one of the most famous Brazilian songs of all time. The muse to inspire the composers was , a 17-year-old girl with blonde hair and blue eyes who walked every day on the beach.

As a successful singer whose fortune is estimated at at the age of 28, Anitta’s cultural power overseas is being built song by song. In the past four years, 24 of her 32 singles were to international markets. Giovanni Bianco, a Brazilian creative director, produced the “Girl From Rio” video. He has worked several times with Madonna, who released the song “” with Anitta in 2019.

Changing Bossa Nova

With bossa nova becoming more popular worldwide, the “Girl From Rio” video cost at least $200,000. Anitta has already collaborated with international stars like Maluma, Major Lazer, Cardi B. and J. Balvin. The official launch party of the song took place at Strawberry Moon, a bar at The GoodTime Hotel in Miami whose partner is Pharrell Williams, an American singer and producer.

In May, “Girl from Rio” was the 8th most-listened song on Spotify after its release, with 1 million plays in Brazil and 400,000 in other countries. Although Anitta featured on popular US shows with NBC and also on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” the song soon fell out of the top 100. With 54 million followers on Instagram, the singer’s fans accused Warner Music — the label Anitta is associated with — of not promoting the song worldwide.

In the video, the white images of the 1950s, carried by bossa nova’s soft pace and soft power, give way to the colorful scenes in “Girl From Rio.” With its trap beat and variation of funk, this is the Brazilian genre in the world today. With the help of her record label or not, Anitta wants to conquer the world with a Rio de Janeiro that is far from the one shown on postcards or holiday brochures — and certainly not the one Bolsonaro wants to promote.

Anitta wants to focus on empowering black people, women and those with standard bodies, not with abs, breasts and butts like models. She definitely knows what she’s doing.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Cultural Power of Anitta in Bolsonaro’s Brazil appeared first on 51�Թ�.

This is the first letter I’ve written to a dead person, though you’re still alive in a sense, aren’t you? There were always two Michael Jacksons: one, the flesh-and-blood mortal who succumbed 12 years ago; the other, a product of countless people’s imaginations, a creation freed of the constraints of time and space who will live forever.

I’m writing to let you know that, since the death of — what shall we call him? — the corporeal Michael Jackson, there has been an afterlife that promises to be, if not quite as interesting as your actual life, at least interesting enough to suggest that the imagined Jackson will live on and affect us for many more years to come. Some may hate me for saying this, but I reckon people will carry on discussing you for decades and will eventually, and perhaps grudgingly, accept that you are an African American who made history.

Let me try to justify this. Think of five African Americans who have earned widespread social approval over the past 40 years. Michael Jordan will probably be on most readers’ lists. Barack Obama too, even though his presidential tenure revealed fallibility that was once considered unthinkable. Oprah Winfrey will surely appear on most lists. Beyonce, like you, a singer whose dreamlike rise has been followed by a generation, will feature too. George Floyd might crop up, not so much for what he did, but for launching an unprecedented global movement. But probably not you, Michael. Yet your achievements compare favorably with those of the others, and you remain as relevant and crucial as any of them.

At the moment, you’re certainly remembered as vividly. Why? Well, I need to fill you in on a few developments that happened after you lost consciousness at your home in the Holmby Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. Paramedics arrived at 12:26 pm and found you weren’t breathing. They tried CPR before rushing you to the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, arriving at 1:14 pm. Surgeons couldn’t revive you, and you were dead at 2.26 pm on June 25, 2009.

The Afterlife Begins

That’s the point at which the afterlife started. Millions of acolytes all over the world went into the kind of mourning we hadn’t witnessed since the death of your friend, Princess Diana, in 1997. It might have been your music that touched people more deeply than probably anyone else since Elvis or the Beatles, but your videos also had something to do with it. The mold-breaking “” video has been seen by — and I’m guessing now — everyone alive and several million more who have left us in the intervening years since it was first broadcast in 1983.

There were other boldly original videos. But there was something else about you that moved people. Like other great artists, you found a way of turning fans from admirers to confidantes; they felt like companions, intimates, people with whom you shared secrets. I don’t think for a second you did. But you persuaded millions they weren’t just observing your life; they were parts of it.

Fans’ sorrow took on a commercial complexion when they stopped crying for long enough to buy your records. You sold a prodigious number of records in your actual life, of course. Your first single for Motown, with your brothers, went straight to number one in the charts. The , and later The Jacksons, were a record-selling phenomenon in the 1970s, but the 1980s were yours alone. As a solo artist, you were the heir to the position occupied earlier in the 20^th century by Frank Sinatra, Elvis and the Beatles. Only Madonna could claim to challenge you as the world’s premier entertainer. By the time of your death, you had sold over a billion records, either by yourself or with your brothers.

The “Thriller” album alone had sold 60 million (now up to 66 million). Sales surged after your death, not because consumers wanted to replenish their collections, but because they wanted a way to validate their relationship with you. In the first week alone after you died, 422,000 copies of your albums sold in the US (40 times the previous week’s total).

In June 2010, “Billboard” estimated that your estate more than $1 billion in revenue in the year after your death. This came from various sources, including the sale of 33 million albums globally, 26.5 million track downloads and merchandise. I have to tell you, Michael: You left an unholy financial mess when you departed. The dispute over the values of your assets wasn’t settled until May 2021 when a Los Angeles judge declared they were worth $111 million. Record sales in addition to the various licensing agreements brokered by your estate made you the highest-earning dead celebrity in history, according to , in 2020. It has been reported that you generated more than in the afterlife.

Multitude of Rumors

But, despite the enduring commercial activity, your afterlife has not been an ennobling experience. Over the years, there have been a few allegations made about your conduct with boys, and these have given rise to a multitude of rumors. Yet none of them damaged your real-life reputation, not irreparably, anyway. Remember the first accusation? It was 28 years , in 1993, when 12-year-old Jordan Chandler, whom you had met the previous year, claimed you had molested him. He made the accusation largely at the urging of his father, and the response of your camp was that this was a shakedown. Another boy, Wade Robson, spoke up in your defense at the time. It seemed advisable to settle the case and, in January 1994, you did exactly that; the figure involved was said to be up to $22 million.

At that point, you had become one of those larger-than-life characters, full of quirks and eccentricities, but so loaded with money and so worshipped by devotees that you pretty much pleased yourself. You didn’t think it was necessary to play by the rules — you probably didn’t even know about any rules. That’s how it seemed in 2003 when you talked to the now-shamed British journalist about having sleepovers with children, including a cancer patient named Gavin Arvizo. In the TV , “Living With Michael Jackson,” you actually said on , “It’s not sexual. We’re going to sleep. I tuck them in. … It’s very charming.” It was either breathtaking naivete that led you to make such an admission or perhaps a self-assuring hubris. Either way, it brought the police to your ranch, an investigation, an arrest and that included child molestation, abduction, false imprisonment and extortion.

Robson defended you once again, this time at your trial in 2005. Members of the jury believed him and, presumably, you when they acquitted you of 14 charges. The not-guilty verdict came four years before your death, almost to the day. But a courtroom verdict is not the same as a social judgment, and suspicions grew. Your did nothing to kill them off. So, they were still swirling around when you resurfaced to announce plans for a series of concerts at London’s O2 Arena to take place over several months in 2009. It was a gigantic 50-gig undertaking, and not everyone thought you were capable of completing it at your age. In fact, you never even got started. You died, aged 50, while rehearsals were taking place.

A Great Leveler

Death is a great leveler, of course: It spares nothing and no one. But, in your case, it tilted the balance very much against you. Robson and James Safechuck both started legal actions in the years following your death. Robson changed his earlier story and alleged you molested him repeatedly over a seven-year period when he was aged between 7 and 14. Safechuck said you abused him on more than 100 occasions. Both Robson and Safechuck were frequent visitors to your Neverland ranch in California during the 1980s.

The bizarre fascination that both elevated and haunted you in your real life became a frightening execration in 2019 after the broadcast of a four-hour, two-part television documentary, “Leaving Neverland.” Directed by Dan Reed, the program focused on Robson and Safechuck. Both men were by then in their 30s. As children, they were swept away by your care, kindness and generosity. In the program, they described how they enjoyed wondrous times at your estate, which was decked out like a giant playground.

But they also , often in granular detail, of events behind closed doors. These, they said, were harrowing encounters that involved the sexual abuse of young innocents. Their version of events was challenged by your family and diehard fans, of course. But you weren’t around to defend yourself, respond to the accusations and offer alternative remembrances. So, Robson’s and Safechuck’s testimonies were given credibility by the TV documentary and considered an overdue exposé. Your songs were banned from several radio stations around the world in the days and weeks following the broadcast.

No famous person has ever been annihilated posthumously — at least not as you have. John F. Kennedy’s peccadilloes have been unearthed and tut-tutted over, but without sullying his character. Marilyn Monroe’s misdeeds have also been highlighted, in her case enhancing her postmortem charisma. The British TV personality Jimmy Savile was excoriated in the media after his death in 2011, though he was not well-known outside the UK.

In your case, you are known probably by everyone on earth. Will they ever think of you differently? The likelihood of new evidence or substantial recantation is slight, and only time might rinse the necro-stigma from your spiritual corpse. It’s paradoxical that you’ll be immortalized in disgrace after a life filled with adulation, applause and rhapsodic approval.

*[Ellis Cashmore’s “” will be published in 2022 by Bloomsbury.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Afterlife of Michael Jackson appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Why Fame Can Be a Nightmare

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For India, Bollywood is the most important cultural soft power, gripping millions of viewers domestically and internationally. Soft power is the ability to shape the preferences of others through science, diplomacy, sports, religion and culture. This allows a country to attract other peoples through seduction rather than coercion. According to , the Indian media and entertainment industry, which Bollywood plays a major role in, has “the potential to reach” $100 billion by 2030. In 2019, Bollywood made more than . Before the COVID-19 pandemic led to major financial losses, the industry had been projected to hit $4.5 billion in 2021.

“T��� White Tiger”

Yet despite being worth so much, Bollywood has once again missed out on the chance to get the last shining prize for its soft power: an internationally acclaimed award. On April 25, India will be part of the 93^rd Academy Awards, but not as a result of a Bollywood flick. “The White Tiger,” a Netflix production directed by Ramin Bahrani, is nominated for best adapted screenplay. Based on Aravind Adiga’s Booker Prize-winning , the movie was shot in India but not produced by any of the hundreds of Bollywood studios located in the country.

“The White Tiger” tells the story of Balram — played by Adarsh Gourav — who moves from a poor rural village to Delhi to become a rich man’s driver. After deciding to commit a crime to escape the complex stratification of Indian society, he becomes wealthy himself. The rags-to-riches story is as rare as a white tiger, as the metaphor of the title suggests. Paolo Carnera’s cinematography frequently shows the dirty streets and misery of life in India for the poor, while Bahrani’s script is full of jokes and criticism about the country’s poverty and social inequality — completely different from what we are used to seeing in most Bollywood movies.

Hollywood is recognized for its achievements in production design, cinematography, screenplay, acting and directing at major festivals in Cannes, Berlin and London. Yet Bollywood continues to miss out on awards, a crucial prize for any movie industry. The same thing happened in 2009 when “Slumdog Millionaire” — which tells the story of Jamal Malik (played by Dev Patel) growing up in Mumbai slums — won eight Oscars, including best picture, best director and best adapted screenplay. That movie was based on Indian writer Vikas Swarup’s novel, “Q & A,” but shot by British director Danny Boyle.

The closest Bollywood came to an Academy Award was with Mehboob Khan’s melodrama “Mother India,” which was nominated for best foreign language in 1958; the movie told the story about the struggles of a woman raising her sons alone. In 2001, Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan produced and acted in “Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India,” which centered on a small village in Victorian India staking its future on a game of cricket against the British rulers. The film was nominated for best foreign language a year later but failed to win. 

Bollywood’s Shortcomings

So, why can’t Bollywood conquer Hollywood and win a golden statue? I went to India in 2008 for an into the country’s movie industry, which also led to my first book, “” (Bollywood Diaries), released in 2009 in Brazil. Before packing my bags for the trip, I watched over 50 Bollywood movies to prepare my questions for the producers, actors, directors and executives of the industry. I soon realized that all those films back then had something in common: there were no sex scenes or nudity, they never mentioned or critically analyzed India’s social caste system, and they avoided making political comments.

Bollywood movies lack gripping human stories and resonant storytelling, which is why they are unable to transcend their culture. They provide an escapist fantasy to Indian audiences but do not work for most viewers outside India. These non-daring storylines lack the quality to win awards at major festivals, including the Oscars. So, why can’t a multibillion-dollar movie industry improve its films? The simple answer is that it can but won’t for two main reasons: escapism and censorship.

First, Bollywood has become a form of escapist entertainment from the reality of India. Often three hours long, the movies are usually full of rich and beautiful stars, singing and dancing and exploring their love lives, only to be interrupted by cruel villains who are defeated in the end. India’s post-production is among the top of the world in special effects, color and sound corrections, displaying beautiful scenes that serve as distractions to the hundreds of of Indians who live below the poverty line.

India is one of the oldest cultures of the world and is extremely rich and diverse. It’s also a modern country with cutting-edge technology. However, all those social, economic, sexual, cultural and even psychological changes and diversity are not embraced in most Bollywood blockbusters. Instead, they are distanced themselves from reality and offer trite stories as entertainment.

Second, the Cinematograph Act of 1952 “principles for guidance in certifying films.” Censor boards were set in production areas of India, such as Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. The closest to a sex scene that Indian movies largely feature quick kisses and partial nudity. If a film does not meet the guidelines set for “decency or morality,” then it doesn’t receive the certificate that allows it to be screened in movie theaters.

In the 2000s, with the arrival of the internet and the rise of downloading foreign movies, often pornographic, some changes were seen in Bollywood. In 2013, Sunny Leone, a Canadian-American former porn star of Indian descent, debuted in the film “Jism 2,” an erotic that shows her topless from behind while being intimate with a man. Yet India, the country where Kama Sutra originated, still doesn’t make movies with deep kissing, explicit sex scenes or bold storylines.

That doesn’t mean that films with sex and nudity are better than blockbusters with music and dancing. Good movies often reflect creatively and boldly the changes in society and the world. Hollywood absorbed those changes in post-Vietnam movies such as “Born on the Fourth of July” (1989) and “Full Metal Jacket” (1987), in contrast to jingoistic and formulaic “T��� Green Berets” (1968) and Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985). All four films were box office hits, but the first two — directed by Oliver Stone and Stanley Kubrick, respectively — established Hollywood’s international reputation because of their sophisticated stories about the Vietnam War.

The Challenge Facing Bollywood

Bollywood is trying to emulate Hollywood. Whistling Woods International, a film school in Mumbai with American investors, is teaching aspiring film professionals. “In India, we must prepare our students to begin at the top of the movie pyramid, because the base pays almost nothing,” said Kurt Inderbitzin, the dean of the school back when I visited India. “Our challenge is to teach students to develop good characters and directing skills, since many of them arrive here with prejudices, imagining they don’t need to learn this kind of stuff, although these are the basic elements of a good film, like the concept of gravity for an astronaut.”

Better films lead to international awards and increase the chances of reaching commercial movie theaters. Better box office results in big markets like the US and Europe would help Bollywood develop India’s soft power. Bollywood faces major competition from streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ that are producing films and television series themselves. Bolder and richer movies may be just what Bollywood needs to keep conquering the hearts and minds of the public in the 21^st century.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Frankie Lymon’s Tragedy

The archetype is not in today’s celebrity culture, nor anywhere near it actually. was an astounding talent from Harlem who, in 1956, surged into the public consciousness courtesy of the then-new medium of television. Lymon was 13 when he and his band, The Teenagers, announced themselves with the , “Why Do Fools Fall in Love,” which was released within weeks of Elvis’ “Heartbreak Hotel.” Lymon sang and co-wrote the single, which was a sensational hit in North America, Britain and practically all over Western Europe despite nine competing cover versions (and several more in later years).

Lymon was as near-ubiquitous as it was possible to be in the late 1950s. He and his band toured Europe as well as the US. At the same age, Michael Jackson was, in 1971, launching his solo career with his first single, “Got To Be There,” and comparisons are justified. Like Jackson, Lymon was young, black and gifted with a voice that had the fragility of youth but the depth that typically accompanies maturity. He also moved like a pro dancer and radiated confidence onstage. His timing was perfect: He arrived at the stage in history when rock’n’roll was forcing music’s equivalent of a paradigm shift, creating an entirely new grammar and syntax for a postwar generation with disposable income and time to spare.

The media hastened his downfall as well as his rise. When he danced with a white girl on a TV show, the show was canned amid a national furor. America’s practice of separating blacks and whites, known as Jim Crow laws, had been violated. But there was a more chilling and premonitory determinant in his decline. Lymon was using heroin at 15. He was dead by 25.

Lymon’s decay and death went relatively unnoticed. By 1968, his records were no longer selling and, in the mid-20th century, neither audiences nor the media were ready to share vicariously in the kind of degradation they now find fascinating. But Lymon was one of those child stars who unraveled in a way that revealed a moral. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but there seems to be too much meaning in his story to neglect. As with so many talented young people who rise and enjoy precocious success, their dream can suddenly turn into a nightmare of disillusionment.

Britney Spears’ Bad Dream

Britney Spears’ nightmarish ordeal has become a story told and retold by countless magazines, newspapers and broadcast media. Once a dominant and ascending force in pop culture, Spears, who was born in Louisiana, was 8 years old when she was turned down for Disney’s “T��� All New Mickey Mouse Club” because she was too young. She returned three years later and landed a permanent spot, along with Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake, both of whom went on to have adult careers in music and movies. The show was canceled in 1991, leaving Spears to pursue a singing career.

At 15, she got a record deal, and in 1998, she “�ĦBaby One More Time.” It was her first single and made her an international phenomenon. In the accompanying video, Spears appeared dressed as a teenage schoolgirl, replete in uniform, but with provocative dance moves. The sight probably made audiences smile nervously. Her second album, “Oops!… I Did It Again,” came out in 2000, turning Spears into a legitimate rival to Madonna as the world’s leading diva.

She seemed to hold all the cards too. Spears was 20 when she signed a huge endorsement deal with Pepsi in 2001. Madonna was then in her early 40s. Two more multimillion-selling albums put Spears in position to conquer the world. In 2002, Forbes magazine called her “the world’s most powerful celebrity” with earnings of about $40 million a year. But then her story arc began to warp.

After huge success with “Toxic” in 2003, record sales began to slip and she seemed to recede from public view. The next time she made big news was in 2007 when pictures of her shaving her head with a hair clipper surfaced. “,” caterwauled the headlines as describing an accident in a nuclear reactor. In fact, Spears had been denied access to her two children by her ex-husband, Kevin Federline, shortly after a spell in rehab — for what is not clear. Spears denied she had a drinking problem, though some she had been drinking and taking pills since she was 13.

Spears grew increasingly impatient with paparazzi. In 2008, Spears’ erratic behavior reached the courts and her affairs were placed under a court-ordered conservatorship (i.e., guardianship), meaning her father should manage her affairs during her incapacitation. Whether or not she was incapacitated is a matter of conjecture. Clearly her fans thought not: They started an online campaign to #FreeBritney.

Earlier this year, a TV documentary, “Framing Britney Spears,” reduced the singer, who is 40 in December, to . Forbes currently her net worth to be $60 million.

When We Stop Clapping

Frankie Lymon and Britney Spears: different ages, different audiences and different kinds of tragedies. But they were both based on hijacked adolescence. We can add more doomed child stars: Lindsay Lohan, Macaulay Culkin, Corey Feldman, Gary Coleman. There’s almost a sacrificial element to a childhood in showbusiness. Some, like actors Kristen Stewart, Daniel Radcliffe and Natalie Portman, have navigated a smooth passage into adulthood and triumphed handsomely. But most child stars seem to be candidates for a dysfunctional adulthood.

Why? The “lost childhood” argument is too crass to be useful. Michael Jackson’s perplexing middle age is sometimes in these terms. There is certainly an intellect-lite plausibility to the idea that children need to develop emotionally and psychologically through various stages and fame interrupts their progress. Jackson was 8 when his father added him to the lineup of the Jackson 5 and encouraged him to reach for the skies rather than settle for an ordinary earthbound life. He spent the rest of his life reaching. Or perhaps just clinging to the rope ladder to the stars left him by his pushy dad.

We, the audience, decide whether it’s sweet dreams or nightmares for child stars. When you think about it, the relationship we have with abundantly talented kids is much like visitors to a circus who delight in watching seals perform tricks and elephants stand on their hind legs (I doubt if they are allowed to feature this nowadays). We are not tempted to inquire too deeply into how the objects of our fascination are trained or coaxed into performing. And, when the act is finished, we do not try to wring any meaning from the drama — we just clap. We eventually stop clapping; when we do, it is not the end of the world for us, though it may be for the animals and the aggrandized humans.

Most kids do not expect adulation and the kind of applause child stars thrive on. They seek mundane rewards like the approval of friends, casual sex, the means to buy alcohol and enough money for fashionable clothes or a down payment on a car. Customary rites of passage typically involve getting laid, wasted and arrested. All three and you are a grownup.

The passage to adulthood for child stars is different. They typically have more money than they can spend, all the clothes, cars and anything else they want, and they have adult friends. Peers are almost inevitably replaced by fellow professionals. Unlike most other adolescents who are indifferent to what the world thinks about them, child stars depend on the admiration and acceptance of an audience. When both of those disappear, it must seem like a termination of life rather than a showbiz career.

*[Ellis Cashmore is the author of “.”]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Why Fame Can Be a Nightmare appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Elizabeth Taylor died on March 23, 2011. Ten years later, her influence remains. Each time you read a story in print about the private life of a celebrity, or watch a TV report purporting to expose a hitherto undisclosed aspect of a public figure, or listen to a radio broadcast about the personal aspects of a famous name, or click on a site that promises confidential details on someone you like or hate, you have Taylor to thank… or blame.

The Kardashians Changed Everything

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Our current preoccupation with the private lives of others is not a natural craving. It was cultivated in the 1960s, encouraged for the rest of the 20^th century and boosted in the 21^st century by a social media stress-tested by countless celebs. We can trace the molecular trail back to Taylor.

Taylor lived her scandal-spangled life in full view of the media. She lived it without the customary protection afforded to Hollywood stars, who might have engaged in discreditable behavior but never advertised it. Taylor, by contrast, did everything but provide footage of her private life. Her lack of discretion shocked not only her fans and the media, but also the Roman Catholic Church, which her for “erotic vagrancy.” She wore the opprobrium as if it if were one of the fabulous jewels gifted to her by admirers (one diamond alone was at $18.9 million in 2019).

The Life of Elizabeth Taylor

Born in London, Taylor was taken to the US at the outbreak of the Second World War by her American parents and touted around studios and gossip columnists by a pushy mother until she made her big breakthrough in the 1944 film, “National Velvet.” She was 12 at the time. Under contract with MGM, Taylor appeared in a series of family-friendly films before starring opposite Rock Hudson in “Giant” and in two Tennessee Williams adaptations, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “Suddenly Last Summer.”

As is often the case with child stars, she matured at a different rate to most, and instead of spending her teenage years getting up to mischief, she got married. Taylor was 18 when she married Nicky Hilton, son of hotelier Conrad Hilton. The marriage lasted eight months. She was married again weeks before her 20^th birthday, this time to British actor Michael Wilding.

She married her third husband Mike Todd, a producer, in 1957. When he died in a plane crash the following year, she married Eddie Fisher, who had been the best man at her wedding. It was an inexplicable and, in the 1950s, monstrous union: Fisher was married to the popular singer-actor Debbie Reynolds and had two children. He left them all for Taylor, prompting a memorable quote from Reynolds’ mother who, when asked to describe Taylor, , “Everybody knows what she is.”

Hollywood had never had a notorious woman quite like Taylor. and were both involved in scandalous affairs, but Taylor’s was of a different order. For a while, she was damned by media and the public they served; she was spat upon, hissed and booed in public. Yet audiences flocked to her movies. So much so that she became one of the most valuable assets in Tinseltown — a fact confirmed when she was asked to play the lead in a remake of “Cleopatra.” She demanded and got a then-unheard-of fee of $1 million. Filming was delayed time and again, once because of a life-threatening illness that Taylor survived and which helped rehabilitate her reputation. But only for a while.

In 1962, Richard Burton, a Welsh Shakespearean actor, married with two daughters, was hired by 20^th Century Fox to play Marc Antony, opposite Taylor’s Cleopatra. The filming was transferred from its original location in London to Rome.

As life follows art, Taylor and Burton became lovers. Their relationship provoked pandemonium. Taylor’s barely believable shamelessness in wrecking a second family and, in the process, humiliating her husband, set the world chattering and watching. Photographs taken by paparazzo Marcello Geppetti with a zoom lens captured the pair in flagrante. The images circulated around the world. By the time the film “Cleopatra” was released, Taylor and Burton were the most outrageous couple — arguably in history — and audiences could allow themselves to be agreeably confused: Were they watching Antony and Cleopatra or Liz and Dick, as they became known?

In the tradition of all grand romances, Burton lavished Taylor with extravagant gifts, especially gems — for which she had a well-documented taste. They married in 1964. It was around this time that Taylor reflected on how she’d become a well-paid product of her own creation: a depthless, meaningless object of public fascination, almost like a marionette without strings.

Taylor and Burton’s relationship was volatile, spanning 14 years — practically each second chronicled by a media then sensing the public appetite for other people’s private lives. Unlike most other Hollywood stars of the time, Taylor had no compunction about sharing her personal affairs. Her conduct might have been ruinous, but in the 1960s and 1970s, a kind of voyeurism was taking hold. She made six films with Burton, each blurring the line between fiction and fact. The public’s vicarious involvement in her tumultuous, often alcohol-fueled relationship grew and spread to the point where a certain prurient curiosity became respectable. It is still respectable, of course.

Taylor and Burton divorced in 1974, remarried the following year and divorced again after 10 months in 1976. Taylor continued to act and remained a media magnet. She married an American politician, John Warner, and became less visible in movies. Her taste for alcohol became a dependence and, together with a strong desire for prescription drugs, became an incapacitating weakness that required attention. In 1983, Taylor became the first celebrity to in to the Betty Ford clinic. She made no attempt to conceal her indisposition and, predictably, the media sent teams to monitor her progress.

Michael Jackson, Charities and White Diamonds

When she emerged, Taylor had found a new partner, this time from outside the spheres of entertainment or politics. Larry Fortensky was a construction worker, 20 years her junior. The eighth wedding took place in 1991 at the Neverland ranch of her by-then friend Michael Jackson. The wedding ceremony was interrupted by a journalist who, in a foolhardy attempt to get a scoop, parachuted into Jackson’s estate — suggesting that Taylor’s media appeal was undiminished.

Taylor’s unlikely and somewhat puzzling friendship with Jackson was genuine enough. She was at Jackson’s side when he was on the end of abuse allegations and proclaimed her support for him, though sickness prevented her from appearing in court for him.

The illness and eventual death in 1985 of her friend Rock Hudson motivated Taylor to support AIDs charities. In that year, she helped American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR). She stayed true to AIDs causes for the rest of her life and could take credit for being one of the most effective promoters of LGBTQI+ causes ever.

Taylor was not the first celebrity to lend her name to a perfume — that was Sophia Loren. But when she transferred some of her mystique to the White Diamonds fragrance, it turned what might have been a scent into one of the biggest market brands ever. Nowadays, every celebrity, from Ariana Grande to Dolly Parton, has their own fragrance.

White Diamonds still holds its own in the world’s market. In a way, it maintains the Taylor legend — and hers is properly a legend. There are all manner of unauthenticated stories and tidbits about her that meld seamlessly with the truth. That is, after all, what a celebrity is: someone about whom a lot is known, but a lot more attributed.

Her Legacy

Elizabeth Taylor was a prototype. Some would say a culprit. But few entertainers leave such an inescapable legacy: Almost every area of society, not just entertainment, is open to inspection. Taylor was a maverick when she allowed fans to pry into her life. Today, we expect every aspiring star, politician and probably everyone else to be as uninhibited. While some rue the passing of what we once regarded as a personal life, the disclosure of forms of abuse once considered domestic and so restrictively beyond the reach of enforcement agencies is part of the rollback of privacy. No one and nowhere is free from public attention.

Taylor’s legacy is that she started a debate, more excitingly and decisively than any other artist, about the public and private spheres. Is it better to maintain a separation or to inquire and reveal as much about ourselves and others as possible? And which of the two benefits society most? Taylor’s answer seems obvious.

*[Ellis Cashmore is the author of “

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Harry and Meghan: In Pursuit of Wealth and Luxury

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Queen Elizabeth II and her family live atop a rigid hierarchy of rank and class awareness that pervades and rots British culture. Under the queen, there is a strict pecking order: princes, dukes, marquesses, earls, viscounts, barons, baronets, knights, followed by the confetti of orders of chivalry handed out to the deserving common folk who have rendered the monarch a service. A network of lord lieutenants — representatives of the queen — reside in every British county to manage the royal patronage at the local level. There are also the hierarchies of the charities and institutions — the Royal Ballet, The Royal National Theater, the Church of England, military regiments and so on — that the queen and her relatives “patronize” (in this instance, an appropriate use of that adjective).

Beyond the aristocratic titles are the untitled gentry compiled in two listings, and . These contain the names and biographies of the “good” families and are the studbooks for the anxious parents of socially ambitious children. The gentry — the old, landed families of England — know who they are and, even if they do not have titles, jealously guard their status. They also make sure their entries in Burke’s are up to date. These families all know each other, mix at the same events, attend the same schools and ensure their offspring marry each other to keep the money and land where it should be. Sometimes, even aristocratic families lose their money and are reduced to earning their living like the rest of us. But they do not lose their status. They may be poor, but they are still upper class. Bloodlines count.

When a complete outsider, Meghan Markle, turned up as Prince Harry’s girlfriend, the questions from his relatives were not about color, race or even money. The questions were: “Does she come from a good family? Do our people know her people? Is she related to the Shropshire Markles? Isn’t that a German name? Perhaps one of the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha cousins might know her?” The questions were about “family.”

None of the answers to any of the questions helped Meghan. The fact that she was beautiful, charming, poised and successful counted for little. Unfortunately for her, the Windsors and the courtiers had already decided that she came from a bad family. Not only that, but divorced and an actress — that word deliberately used rather than “actor.” The gossip picked up from the royal circles was that Meghan’s parents were “common” and “related to no one.” When no senior male relative or even family friend could be found to walk Meghan down the aisle, it just further confirmed her lack of “breeding.”

Even worse, Meghan was given the clear impression that her family was so embarrassing that only her mother could be invited to the wedding. The chatter among the Windsors and the well-connected classes was not about race but about how Harry had married so much beneath him. No wonder Meghan felt an outsider.

Kate Middleton, the duchess of Cambridge, shares much with Meghan — and she knows it. Her family is not of ancient lineage, and her relatives, if not embarrassing, are whispered in palace circles to be, “How shall one say — not our sort of people.” When they were dating, Prince William told his well-born friends to stop saying “doors to automatic” every time his girlfriend came in the room — a reference to the fact Kate’s mother had been a British Airways flight attendant and that William was obviously slumming it. Kate has become acutely aware that she has to disown her past. Meghan is her own person and not willing to do that.

Race is not the problem. The corrosive class consciousness of the British is the issue. The first step to root out this cancer is to abolish the monarchy.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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I imagine anyone who has a loved one or a friend who has suffered (I use this verb carefully) with serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, major depression or other functional impairments, will be upset by Harry’s cavalier description of his response to the media attention he and his wife Meghan habitually receive.

Are the Windsors the New Kardashians?

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When the duke and duchess of Sussex grumble about their lack of privacy and condemn the media for the moral decay they appear to symbolize, they should ask whether they are having to pay for the audacity of trying to disguise their own moral decay with a flagrantly cosmetic show of trying to live a private life. This is a couple that has designed its own mission to escape a life of unlimited privilege and comfort — but with a modicum of public duties to fulfill — in order to pursue a life of extravagant luxury and incalculable wealth. These things come at a price, and here it is this: People will pronounce judgment on you. That’s it.

Playing the Villains

Of course, in order to do so, people need evidence. And that’s where the media come in. They act as the public’s proxy: They represent us, acting on our behalf, have our authority to invade your privacy, probe your personal life and investigate your affairs, even in a hostile or critical way. The Sussexes want to stay in our minds. So they need a media they have recently called “” like they need antiperspirants — useful but often containing aluminum (a toxin).

A little over three years ago, when they announced their engagement, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle pulled ahead of George and Amal Clooney and Barack and Michelle Obama in the best-loved couples’ stakes. Now, they’re only just edging Fred and Rosemary West. Their anemic ubiquity isn’t their own fault, of course. They can’t help it if the media chronicle their exploits thoroughly. All the same, they might try a little harder not to play the villains quite so perfectly.

The barely believable timing of the upcoming with Oprah Winfrey only days after Meghan won her privacy case against the Mail on Sunday could not have been dreamt up. A woman who cares so fervently about her private life and was prepared to go to court to defend it, promises to discuss marriage, motherhood, life as a royal and how she is handling “intense public pressure” in front of several million TV viewers. Even if the audience falls short of those 90 million worldwide who watched Oprah’s interview with Michael Jackson in 1993, it will still be colossal. (In the UK alone, nearly 23 million watched Martin Bashir’s 1995 interview with Diana, princess of Wales, Harry’s mother, of course.) This is exactly why we are all drawn to the couple. They invite us to be judge and jury, and there’s something quite satisfying about judging others. “Disgraceful! Shame on you! Good for you!” We applaud people we like, deplore those we dislike, and sometimes just feel indignant. We take our reward from all types of pronouncement. This is why Harry and Meghan have become so satisfying.

Filling a Vacancy

Viewers will watch partly to learn, partly to amuse themselves and partly to adjudicate. I am not convinced Harry fully understands this, but I suspect Meghan is canny enough to have grasped the full implications of Sunday’s interview. Meghan was brought up in Woodland Hills, California, about a half-hour’s drive away from Beverly Hills, where Kim Kardashian was raised. While no one has suggested Meghan has aspirations to be the next KK, there is a vacancy. “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” the hit TV show, has been canceled, and Kim is sorting out her divorce from Kanye West.

The next phase of her career will probably not require her to remain in the public purview. She is worth about $780 million, according to Forbes, and still only 40. Meghan is a year younger, but is a relatively fresh figure in the public imagination and could learn from her. I am not contemplating she will emulate the sex tape that shot Kim to notoriety in 2007, of course. Perish the thought. But consider: Kim Kardashian virtually handed audiences license to make evaluations of her behavior.

Meghan seems to intuitively understand what she has got into. The Oprah interview will not be a ferocious interrogation, but the doyenne of talk shows is no pushover and will want disclosure. Viewers will almost certainly be presented the chance to decide whether Meghan is right or wrong on a number of issues. She will reveal things that were hitherto unknown and force viewers to take a position. And all this will be rendered painless by the simple fact that the audience’s verdicts will have no consequences of note for the people involved. Meghan and Harry will unhook their mics, walk off set and congratulate each other on a job well done. They will have appeared, spoken and set a million tongues wagging. That’s what celebrities do.

And that’s show business, isn’t it? Meghan is from a showbiz background and, even if she is now a royal pariah, she’s still a duchess and will exploit every commercial possibility in the illustriousness conferred by this title. In particular, she probably prides herself on her ability to rile and divide. Many, it seems, regard her as vacuous, superficial, facile, insubstantial and ignorant — an apotheosis of style without content. Some think she is sly, conniving and Machiavellian. Others still consider her to be a sublime example of modern womanhood: self-confident, decisive, opinionated and purposeful; for this, they both respect and love her. In the eyes of this last group, she has been the making of Harry. We all admire the cheek and chic of how whatever she does gets done.

The trouble is, when no one especially cared about (or even knew) Meghan Markle, many have been invested in Prince Harry for more than three decades (he is 36). Some will probably cringe to see him expose himself in front of millions, probably at the behest of his wife. Others will draw on their reserves of resentment and blame him for his self-serving treachery in leaving British shores for a celebrity lifestyle in LA.

Neither of them is innocent, but then again, neither is Oprah, CBS, ITV nor the countless newspapers and magazines that have carried news of the couple. And don’t forget us — no one gets off scot-free. Blame is layered. Everyone who watches even snippets of the fateful interview, whether they love or loathe the couple, is implicated in perpetrating this narrative of two lavishly entitled lives striving to become even more lavishly entitled.

*[Ellis Cashmore is the author of “.”]

 The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Of the five female names at the core of the clan three are Kardashians: Kim, Khloe, Kourtney. The two Jenners are called Kylie and Kendall. The clan appears to obey a tribal law requiring that the first names of all females begin with the letter “K.” Rather than looking for a significant cultural link with, say, Franz Kafka, who gave the name “K” to the hero of his dystopian novel “T��� Castle,” the ladies’ common initial is best explained by the narcissism of their father, celebrity lawyer Robert Kardashian. He achieved fame as a member of O.J. Simpson’s defense team in the most famous US trial of the 20^th century, far more famous than, say, the ,” the or the , all three of which had a real impact on contemporary history and the evolution of American ideology and politics. Simpson was, after all, a star football player and Hollywood actor.

The Kardashians Changed Everything

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The five K sisters and half-sisters share an inherited hyperreal talent for finding ways to get their names into the popular news cycle. The latest exploit has caused something of a stir. Kendall Jenner announced her new business venture, thanks to the highly original idea of launching her personal brand of tequila. Little did it matter that George Clooney, Michael Jordan, Dwayne “T��� Rock” Johnson and other celebrities had already done it. Jenner’s bold move attracted the attention of numerous adepts of Twitter, who lambasted the young lady for crossing a cultural line in the standard game of exploiting one’s celebrity for cash.

One Twitterati, @YaraB, : “Tired of the celebrity tequila craze! WTF does @KendallJenner know about tequila my family’s been doing back breaking work in the fields for their entire lives in Jalisco just for ppl to come dip their toes Face with rolling eyes stay in your lane.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Celebrity tequila:

Any of the numerous brands of an iconic Mexican spirit promoted by US media celebrities with the specific purpose of persuading celebrity-obsessed Americans that by consuming their brand, they partake in the aura of good taste, talent, beauty and wealth associated with the famous, whose impeccable taste has led to the creation of an ideal product.

Contextual Note

The media pounced on this story to turn it into a modern cautionary tale. Jenner’s critics wasted no time expressing their indignation at her crime of “cultural appropriation,” a term created by America’s “identity culture.”&�Բ�����;It designates the moral failing that consists of laying claim to the attributes of a culture other than one’s own. A white person wearing blackface is clearly the most egregious and best-policed example. A white American donning a Mexican sombrero at a Halloween party is equally suspect. A less trivial example is the story that recently occupied headlines concerning Alec Baldwin’s wife, Hillary Baldwin. Born and educated in the US, for years, “Hilaria” attempted to create a brand for herself in the media by .

Why is Jenner’s act of appropriation more blameworthy than Clooney’s or Jordan’s? There is one solid reason. Her hyperreal, narcissistic, over-privileged, superficial, bling-bling personal style is light years away from Mexico’s gustatory and artisanal traditions. At best, Jenner’s initiative evokes the colonialist mindset at which the British excelled when they adopted curry and other exotic traditions reflecting the local color of the colonies they ruthlessly exploited. In contrast, Kenner’s venture falls into the same category as and Trump Vodka. It’s simply a greedy attempt to make money out of nothing other than celebrity name recognition. Jenner is certainly aware that George Clooney sold his tequila brand for $1 billion. Greed is a major force that drives hyperreality.

Some commentators, without dismissing the complaint of cultural appropriation, stepped in to mobilize the other major theme proposed by identity culture: misogyny. They pointed out that men like Clooney, Jordan and others were never taken to task for committing the same crime. The young woman had stepped into exclusive male territory. The author of a book about tequila, Marie Sarita Gaytán, : “When women step ‘out of bounds,’ whether it’s in politics, business, or in this case, culture and entrepreneurship, it touches a nerve. That, for me, is a far more interesting story.” Gaytán doesn’t deny Jenner’s shameless cultural appropriation. She simply highlights the second feature of American identity culture at play in this largely trivial but seriously revealing story about cultural hyperreality.

Historical Note

Tequila has a history in US popular culture, especially in the movies. It carries with it the exotic, romantic and heavily masculine cachet of a mythology that draws on the imaginary past of a more rugged version of North American civilization — the Wild West. It accompanied but also predated the Anglo-Saxon conquest of the continent north of the Rio Grande. 

Tequila is an ancestral, artisanal, authentically North American product that the white Anglo European civilization could not have invented. The Scots in the Appalachian Mountains diligently applied their ancestral science of distilling to invent an ersatz of Scotch whisky. It evolved into a product called American whiskey (with the added “e”). Though made with different ingredients, in a countryside deprived of peat, US whiskeys were born from a quest to resemble the original model from the British Isles.

Tequila and Mezcal are purely Mexican. They owe nothing to the Spanish. They are made from blue agave, which cannot be grown elsewhere. They are produced by a breed of farmer that only exists in Mexico, the jimadores. There is no way the jimador’s farming skills can be duplicated by an industrial process. Nevertheless, the distilleries with global brands have found ways of tweaking the rules and cheating with the ingredients to produce something they can still call tequila and market globally.

US capitalism’s genius for marketing has successfully exploited tequila’s cultural cachet to create a huge global demand for the spirit. It isn’t the taste of the product that attracts consumers but the symbolism. Confused by the myriad brands that exist, possessing no culture of consumption of an exotic product, Americans need an identifiable celebrity to guide them toward satisfying a taste they cannot create on their own. Celebrities can simply step up to make money out of the trust their fans have in their idols’ more refined culture.

This real significance of this episode has little to do with either cultural appropriation or misogyny. It isn’t even about tequila. The controversy around Jenner’s tequila reveals something more essential about the nature of the hyperreal society we not so much live in but find ourselves contained within. The hyperreality has been spawned by the convergence of three phenomena: late-stage capitalism as an economic system increasingly focused on illusion rather than on response to real economic needs, consumer culture as a psychologically programmed social system that generates and maintains the illusion, and celebrity culture as the reference for defining society’s shared notions of success and the goal of everyone’s personal ambition.

Jenner, Clooney and other US celebrities who market their own tequila are not just non-Mexicans trying to make a living. The jimadores who actually make the tequila — like the vast majority of Mexicans themselves — spend their lives struggling for survival. The celebrities who brand and sell their tequila obviously don’t need either more money or more prestige. They have more money than they could ever spend and more success than they could ever narcissistically celebrate in several lifetimes. They are driven by the “logic” of exploiting their notoriety, simply because it exists and provides a permanent, easily exploitable pretext for gain. In their hyperreal moral system, not exploiting it would, in Christian terms, be . Exploiting it also means exploiting Mexicans. But that’s okay. After all, they will be paid for their work, so, as , all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Foreign-Language Entertainment Is Having Its Soft-Power Moment

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Is this new status enough for China? Probably not. New blockbusters will soon rebalance these numbers, but soft power — the ability to seduce people from all over the world through culture — takes time to build up. Soft power also brings lasting income to its country of origin in terms of products and services, like tourism for example. When in 1934, Walt Disney began work on “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” other film studio chiefs derided the project as “,” since adults, not children, were considered to be primary consumers. These executives forgot that children watch films over and over again and want all the related merchandise. “Snow White” went on to become the first film in history to gross $100 million, selling 400 million tickets from 1937 to 1948.

Welcome to Chinawood

These are just numbers. Disney’s greatest achievement was making his creations into lucrative vehicles of US culture for decades to come. That is what China wants to achieve. It has been taking similar steps ever since farmer-turned-entrepreneur Xu Wenrong began building Hengdian World Studios in the 1990s. Known as , it became the largest outdoor film studio in the world and one of China’s biggest domestic tourist attractions, historic film sets, a resort hotel and live performances. itself “China’s tourism and performing arts capital,” Chinawood attracts thousands of TV shows and film productions every year.

Also, since fewer than are allowed to take a bite of this massive market due to a strict quota system, Chinawood also foreign productions like “T��� Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,” a Hollywood-Chinawood co-production (these escape quota restrictions), starring the likes of Brendan Fraser and Jet Li, grossed over in the first 21 weeks of its release.

Is this enough to make Chinawood a new soft power? The answer is, probably not. Because Chinawood productions face a similar challenge as all the other blockbusters shot in the country, these films often lack creativity, self-criticism, audacity and freedom. Take the recent historical war drama, Guan Hu’s “,” for example. The film — at , 2020’s top-grossing production — pushed China to the number one spot in global box office revenues. However, most of this comes from China itself and not international markets. While European and US theaters still struggle to open because of COVID-19, even without the pandemic, it’s hard to say that such productions could help the Chinese film industry overseas.

“T��� Eight Hundred” was abruptly pulled from a scheduled premiere at the in 2019 without an explanation. A version shorter by 11 minutes later opened in theaters, with much fewer scenes involving forces. Besides likely censorship, what may explain the little impact the film had internationally, as the film critic suggests, is that while avoiding the “rabid China-is-top-dog quality of the Wolf Warrior movies,” its “spirit is resolutely neo-nationalist,” with “all the bombast and jingoism of the current moment.”

Hollywood became an effective soft powerhouse not only because of million-dollar budgets and top-quality products, but also thanks to creative freedom. For instance, Oliver Stone’s “Born on the Fourth of July” (1989) and Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” (1979), both masterpieces, were expressly critical of US military intervention in Vietnam. The films are also on the patriotic side, with American values overemphasized. However, by criticizing America’s own culture and politics, the films are far from being hard-power propaganda.

Hard Power Interference

The Communist Party of China (CPP), on the other hand, interferes directly in cultural productions. According to a report by , PEN America’s deputy director of Free Expression Research and Policy, since 2011, the CCP’s Central Committee issued a statement declaring the “urgency for China to strengthen its cultural soft power and global cultural influence.” As Louisa Lim and Julia Bergin in The Guardian, the party is trying to “reshape the global information environment with massive infusions of money” with the aim being to “influence public opinion overseas in order to nudge foreign governments into making policies favorable toward China’s Communist Party.”

The official People’s Daily once , “we cannot be soft on soft power,” calling for culture must be exported in order to strengthen China’s international stance. Chinawood is part of this effort, which includes spent annually on public diplomacy, in contrast with $2 billion by the US Department of State in 2018. Soft power works well when China opens hundreds of to spread its language and culture around the world. What doesn’t work is when the same party severely punishes Chinese ethnical minorities, like the Muslim Uighurs facing persecution in Xinjiang.

China already has an important cultural soft power: its art, poetry, painting, sculpture and pottery, from the early imperial dynasties to the 20^th century, coveted by museums and collectors around the world. It succeeds because the state hard power doesn’t interfere significantly with it. But when it comes to contemporary culture — films, games, TV shows and apps like Tik Tok — Chinese hard power seems to impose harmful control. That’s not how soft power works. It needs freedom and self-criticism to produce genuine and seductive art.

George Orwell once said that “Journalism is printing what someone does not want printed; everything else is public relations.” The phrase also pertains to the arts and the entertainment industry. When President that “the stories of China should be well told, voices of China well spread and characteristics of China well explained,” by “well” he probably means “positive.” That is definitely not how one wins soft power for the long term.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Can Chinawood Win Soft Power for Beijing? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Racism in America Leaves Its Soft Power Greatly Weakened

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The Oscars may be just following a much bigger trend in entertainment in the past few years, with non-English-language shows becoming international hits even in markets like the US and the UK that don’t consume a lot of dubbed or subtitled content. The American review website Rotten Tomatoes chose Netflix’s first German-language show, “Dark,” as the among 63 competitors, getting 80% of the 2.5 million votes, against English-language hits like “Mindhunters” and “T��� Crown.”

Bound to Lead

Latin and, much later, French, were the international languages for diplomacy, the theater and literature. British imperial power put the English language at the center of world affairs and, right as that empire faded, American dominance reinforced its importance. But it was Hollywood’s soft power over the 20^th century that made the English language seductive and attractive the world over.

In his 1990 “Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power,” political scientist Joseph Nye used the term “soft power” to define the ability to get something by persuasion, not coercion or payment. Governments need to spend much less money when national culture, ideals and values appeal to the wider world, generating revenues in tourism, arts and entertainment. In other words, soft power is a smart tool for any nation to reach its worldwide goals instead of opting for threats, guns and war.

Hollywood shaped the preferences of a large number of audiences for English-language films and TV shows since the creation of the studios in the 1910s. Other countries took advantage of that. The British Council, established in 1934 and currently presented in over 100 countries, invests in keeping the English language a powerful medium in which the arts, diplomacy, entertainment, science and technology are conducted. With a of £1,3 billion ($1,6 billion) in 2019-20, the organization views English as a way to , allowing the British Council to frame culture and language as political tools through which soft power can be garnered, strengthening the UK’s reputation across the world.

But quality entertainment like “Dark” can make even a difficult language like German more appealing to a global audience. The second season of Iceland’s “Trapped” was watched by in the UK, Germany, France and across Scandinavia. It focuses on a series of mysterious murders in a freezing small town where policemen never fire guns — a cultural shock for audiences accustomed to violence in Hollywood productions. Distribution demand for the Spanish “La Casa de Papel” soared for its fourth season: From April 3 to 5 this year, the show was 31.75 times than popular English-language series like “T��� Walking Dead,” “Westworld” and “Game of Thrones.”

The show not only broke the aversion to foreign languages among audiences, but also made popular other forms of expression instead of repeating well-worn Hollywood formulas. John Doyle in The Globe and Mail that “La Casa de Papel” is a “heist-centric multipart drama that upends most clichés of heist movies and celebrates others. It is also deliciously melodramatic at times, riffing on the telenovela style of telling one concentrated storyline that has outrageous twists and much passion.”

Leaving the Telenovela Behind

Netflix, which is represented in 190 countries, has become one of the main producers of foreign-language hits, with other shows breaking the English barrier, such as the Turkish “T��� Protector,” French “Osmosis,” Polish “T��� Woods” and South Korea’s “Kingdom.” According to , a professor at Trinity College, Dublin, who researches Netflix’s international expansion, the success of non-English language shows can be explained by the natural appeal of local products, together with a tendency toward broader and more diverse tastes of consumers in the 21^st century.

As John Hazelton in Screen Daily, American programmers feel a growing appetite for foreign-language shows despite the fact that foreign films are being watched less in the cinemas, suggesting a migration from the big to the smaller screen, and streaming. Hazelton quotes Jan Diedrichsen, the general manager of Sundance TV, saying that “Back in the day, if audiences wanted something adventurous they would go to arthouses and see those independent or foreign films. Now on television we’re providing that adventure and a window into some of the best stories from around the world.”

In the US, the of non-English titles on Netflix increased 50% this year compared with 2019 and the of dubbed films and shows is rising 120% every year, according to some of the very few audience statistics the company shares.

Known for its telenovelas for more than 130 countries for the past 30 years, with 100 million daily viewers worldwide, Brazilian TV Globo is aware that the telenovela format may become less relevant as streaming subscriptions soar all over the world. In 2015, the company launched GloboPlay, its own streaming service. This year, TV Globo released the terror thriller “,” with clear intention to overcome the image of a telenovela channel, aiming at international markets.

To compete with major players like Netflix and Amazon Prime, GloboPlay announced a with Disney Plus, launched in Brazil this November, with subscriptions for both streaming services starting at 37,90 reais ($6,99). US-based network HBO recently announced six new local for the following years as Brazil is fast becoming one of the key global streaming markets.

Just a few years ago, producers who wanted to reach an international audience needed to embrace English-language soft power even if that caused cultural distortions in the final product, like in Fernando Meirelles’s 2008 film “Blindness,” the English adaptation of the Portuguese book of Nobel Prize winner José Saramago, or “Love in the Time of Cholera,” directed by Mike Newell, adapted from Gabriel García Márquez’s novel of the same title. In both cases, the original language — Portuguese and Spanish, respectively — are key elements to the charm and beauty of the novels. The slang, local accents and neologisms were all the elements that helped both authors win the Nobel Prize for Literature but were, unfortunately, partly lost in translation to film.

With local artists and producers getting the taste of English soft power, audiences from all over the world can finally enjoy a much broader and immersive experience of other cultures from the comfort of their own homes — and with good entertainment, of course.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Foreign-Language Entertainment Is Having Its Soft-Power Moment appeared first on 51�Թ�.

What Is Behind Football’s Persistent Racism?

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He also embodied a new spirit in professional sport. Fair play was no longer sacrosanct —  the new spirit was one of winning at all cost. But, most importantly, he was dangerous: Wherever Maradona strayed, there was risk and peril of some kind. Combined, they elevated from mere mortal to a stupendous emblem of a new age.

Unrepentant

Maradona seethed with volatility, the anarchy of his nature frequently subordinating nurture, or at least augmenting it. No incident better illustrates this than his belief-beggaring “” goal of 1986. In a vicious payback for Argentina’s humiliation in the Falklands conflict four years before, Maradona forced the ball into the net in a World Cup game against England using foul, rather than fair, means. It was a move that, today, would be instantly invalidated and punished after video review.

In the mid-1980s, as Maradona later shamelessly , “It was a nice feeling, like some sort of symbolic revenge against the English.” And the goal stood. An accident? No. “I knew it was my hand,” the player, not in confession but in celebration. He was unrepentant for the rest of his life.

His public image in England will always be compromised by the foul, but elsewhere, he is acknowledged as one of the best, if not the best, football players of all time. Maradona will always be compared with his near-contemporary Pelé, 20 years his elder (now 80), also South American (Brazilian, in his case) and a far, far less perplexing character, who avoided playing in the European leagues. Maradona, by contrast, earned his spurs in Italy’s Serie A and Spain’s La Liga, two of the most competitive environments in football.

The comparison of the two players brings into relief the global media: association football, more than any other sport, was enthusiastically broadcast around the world in 1982 when 21-year-old Maradona arrived in Barcelona. Pelé had retired five years before, having spent his final years in the relatively undemanding and largely unseen US league. He was beige to Maradona’s explosion in a paint factory.

Football was beginning a transformation that would make it the world’s most popular and valuable sport, a marketing vehicle for major corporations and a den of most iniquitous corruption. Money was the common denominator, and Maradona was a (perhaps unwitting) emblem of this new age. Barcelona paid a then-world record $9.81 million to his Argentinian club Boca Juniors in 1982. Napoli paid Barcelona a then-record $12 million transfer fee for him in 1984 and, while in those days salaries were not disclosed, Maradona was almost certainly the world’s highest-paid player. Perhaps justifiably: He inspired Napoli to Serie A successes in 1987 and 1990 as well as in 1989’s UEFA Cup.

With Mike Tyson, Ben Johnson and Magic Johnson, Maradona became one of the preeminent athletes of the 1980s. Notice the similarities? Boxer Tyson was convicted of rape in 1992. Sprinter Ben Johnson was stripped of his Olympic gold medal in 1988 after testing positive for drugs. Basketball player Magic Johnson, in 1991, announced he was HIV positive. All were virtuosos in their chosen sports; all were arguably better known for matters either unrelated to sports or, in Ben Johnson’s case, transgressions.

Transgressions

Maradona had many of his own transgressive moments. Apart from the now-legendary “Hand of God,” Maradona made no secret of his political leanings and leftist leaders across Latin America, such as Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales. He provocatively befriended the revolutionary Castro and even had his image tattooed on his leg.

Son of a factory worker raised in a shantytown on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Maradona, who was born in 1960, first met Castro in 1987 when basking in Argentina’s World Cup triumph. He identified with the dispossessed and found, in Cuba, a political system he apparently found well-matched with his own convictions. Maradona spent four years , reputedly battling against substance dependency.

Drugs were a feature of Maradona’s life and, while they may ultimately have contributed to his downfall, they also ensured the media stayed on his case. He tested positive for cocaine in Italy in 1991 (resulting in a 15-month-long ban from football), was disqualified from the 1994 World Cup after another positive drug test and was rumored to use various illicit substances long after his playing days. He retired in 1997 after another drug scandal, claiming he had been . After that, Maradona had long spells of poor health and struggled with dependencies. Prior to his death, he was due to receive treatment for alcohol addiction.

Some athletes are remembered for their sports prowess; others for their antics; still others for both. Maradona was one such being: prodigiously talented but possessed of a turbulent streak that was, perhaps, ultimately self-destructive. A less celebrity-oriented media might have let him fade to obscurity, as they might any other serially-disgraced retired athlete. Not Maradona: He was far, far too newsworthy for a ravenous media that didn’t need to search for scraps — he kept serving up sumptuous repast.

Stories of his demons and misdemeanors kept us on alert. We knew his wouldn’t be a long and prosperous life. This is why we, as well as the media, loved him. Maradona was a flawless emblem of flawed celebrity: an athlete with all the gifts, yet without a clue how to conserve and nourish them.

*[Correction: An earlier version of this article mistakenly gave Maradona’s birth year as 1961. Updated 26/11/2020 at 18:28 GMT.]

*[Ellis Cashmore is the author of “.”]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Diego Maradona, the Perfect Celebrity Athlete appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Indian Cinema’s Own Brand of Sexism

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Fair-skinned women have often made disparaging remarks to me. They have displayed a sense of entitlement because of their fairness. Today, I don’t blame these women for behaving in such a manner. I pity them now because they have been conditioned by a racist society to believe that light skin is the secret to success. Millions of Indian women and girls have faced racism in their own country for being “dark-skinned.” Yet few take a stand against such racist thinking. Indian society has unconsciously accepted that fair women are superior to dark women.

A Very Indian Racism

Racism begins at a young age for Indian girls. It starts with trying to “improve” our skin tone with homemade recipes. Over the years, this racist abuse becomes systemic. Girls grow up with remarks from friends and family extolling fairness. They see ads on television for creams that prize fair skin and offer to take darker women facing discrimination to the fairer promised land.

Those women who “fail” to make their skin tone lighter “struggle” to find suitable men to marry as advertisements for arranged marriages still ask for fair-skinned women. If fair skin is the ticket to instant success, then India definitely ranks near or at the top.

My skin tone is brown, the most common one among Indian women. As a result, I have suffered from discrimination and struggled with confidence issues.

I also belong to a middle-class family, where my father and mother struggled to make ends meet. In a private school, I was one of the “poorer” kids. As a young girl, I did not have the resources to make myself look good. As I grew older, I did not have the “right” skin color to break into the popular girl gang. I spent years struggling to love myself. I critically evaluated every part of my body, hating myself. In fact, I became my biggest critic, failing to cope with body image issues.

In college, I became friends with another woman, who had darker skin. Living with her made me realize how fractured my society was when it came to skin color. My friend was rejected by a man she loved because she wasn’t “good-looking” in the conventional sense of the term. Fair and Lovely, a cream to make skin lighter, was constantly shown in advertisements. They compounded our pain. The ads showed women looking bad or tired when they were dark-skinned, and more confident and beautiful when they were light-skinned. Our popular culture continues to propagate fair skin as the landmark for success for women.

Racism Must End

Today, I have decided to speak out against the racist Indian fixation for fair skin. I do so for the countless girls of my country. I don’t want them to grow up feeling less worthy just because they cannot fit into our society’s description of a “beautiful woman.”

Last week, the Hindi film industry, more popularly known as Bollywood, released a song: “.” At first sight, the song sounds harmless. A closer examination reveals Indian racism at its worst. The catchphrase would outrage or anger any person who believes in equality and justice: “tujhe dekh ke goriya, Beyonse sharma jayegi” (after seeing you, fair woman, Beyonce will feel ashamed”).

In one stroke, Bollywood demeaned Beyonce, a black American star who has fought racism for years. It demonstrated the deep racism of an industry that prides itself on promoting stereotypical standards of beauty. The most important of those standards is fair skin.

Bollywood epitomizes centuries of Indian patriarchal and racist thinking. It is now the top purveyor of such thinking in the country. The time has come to speak up against this toxic thought. If we keep quiet, then thousands of girls damned for not being fair enough will lose their ability to speak up. 

Producers, directors and actors in Bollywood have long compromised on their integrity for years to make money. By catering to entrenched patriarchal thinking, Bollywood creates monstrous songs demeaning women’s bodies, minds and skin color. The popular “item” songs literally refer to a pretty woman as an item, demeaning and degrading womanhood.

Sadly, many women justify such songs. Actor Kareena Kapoor Khan complimented Ananya Panday, the fair woman in the “Beyonse Sharma Jayegi” video, for “looking hot.” Kapoor might subconsciously be justifying her own past actions. For years, she has held aloft the torch of patriarchy. Kapoor has done numerous item songs, including one in which she was referred to as a type of chicken who could be devoured alongside alcohol. Famously light-skinned, Kapoor has professionally benefited from the Indian fixation with fairness.

Dark-skinned actors have not been so lucky. Bollywood has pushed them to take up roles in “art cinema,” while success in the film industry is largely the preserve of fair-skinned women. Actor Sonam Kapoor summed up this attitude in a comment on national television. She declared that she would not watch a film unless it had “good looking people.”&�Բ�����;Good looking in Kapoor speak means fair-skinned, an article of faith in Bollywood. Hardly anyone calls out this toxic Bollywood belief because it reflects a gospel truth in Indian society.

Bollywood’s False Beauty Myths

Bollywood has shamelessly upheld false standards of feminine beauty. The talk of respect for women is just talk. In an earlier article on 51�Թ�, I wrote about sexism in Bollywood. While writing that article, I found that the age difference between male and female co-stars in Bollywood has increased from two to three years to over 25 in just a decade. Women have to be young, slim and, of course, fair-skinned.

Bollywood producers, directors and actors are not alone in peddling toxic beauty myths. India’s fashion magazines invariably edit photos of actors to make them look flawlessly perfect and fairer.

When it comes to systemic racism in Indian culture, Bollywood takes the cake. In much of India, people rely solely on Bollywood for entertainment. Bollywood films help create a society less accepting of women who do not fit the mold. Women are pushed to adhere to certain standards of beauty and demeaned when they don’t fit in. To be dark is a sin that you can never wash off until you die.

Such is the reach of Bollywood that it could be a force for positive change. Why not produce songs that say every woman is beautiful? Why not produce films that portray women who are defined by what they do with their lives, not by their looks? Why not create catchy anthems to promote education of women? 

Fashion magazines could help too. Vogue India could feature a female social activist on its cover. Its editors must ask themselves a simple question: Why does Vogue India always have to feature a heavily edited, “socially accepted” beautiful woman? 

The answer probably lies in extreme commercialization. The state of India’s media and entertainment industry can be summarized in just one sentence: jo dikhta hai, wahi bikta hai (only that sells well that looks good). Fashion magazines are unwilling to feature the image of a dark-skinned woman toiling in a field because that image won’t sell. Similarly, Bollywood is unwilling to change itself to avoid losing money. Racism sells. Cash is king. The show goes on.

Before we assume Bollywood racism to be immutable, we must remember the industry was not always like this. Once upon a time, it showcased women like Asha Parekh and Rani Mukerji. They set body and skin color standards that represent millions of Indian women. Over the years, Bollywood has degenerated and now sets ridiculous specifications for women’s skin tones and waist sizes. 

Our women and black women like Beyoncé deserve better. The millions of Indian women who feel neglected because of their skin color must remember that a revolution must begin. We should take down every person who demeans us and judges us on our skin color.

At a time when mass protests are demanding an end to discrimination against black people, it is time for Indians to stand up as well. We must look ourselves in the mirror and confront our centuries-old misogyny, sexism and racism.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Racism Is in Bollywood’s DNA appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Now, the reality TV series is soon to be no more. Next year, we’ll see the 20th and final season of the show that changed everything. And if you think I am exaggerating, look around. Women emulate Kim and her siblings, not only in the way they look, but in the way they talk (it’s called ) and, of course, the way they spend their money. If the Kardashians use a product, its market success is assured. The world’s consumption habits are constantly under revision according to the Kardashians’ preferences.

There’s no secret to how they do it. Over worshipful followers on Instagram, plus another on Twitter give Kim — and her sisters — the capacity to make or destroy an item. In perhaps the most dramatic display of this, Kylie Jenner — Kim’s half-sister — $1.6 billion from Snap’s valuation in 2018 with a to her 24.5 million (at that time) Twitter followers: “sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me… ugh this is so sad.”

The Kardashians will carry on doing this long after their show has disappeared, but there is an inevitable feeling that we are approaching an end. This is not the end of “Kardashian Kulture,” but it’s the end of something — an epoch maybe. The Kardashians will leave a legacy, and I mean something deeper and more lasting than just influence. Kim, in particular, will, I’m sure go on changing culture as she has done for the past couple of decades.

Friends With Paris Hilton

So, how did she come up with the idea of Kim Kardashian, influencer par excellence? Kim’s inspiration was her onetime friend Paris Hilton, who, in the early 21st century, was inescapable. Everywhere she went, at any time of day or night, there was someone at hand with a digital camera. In pre-social media, pre-smartphone days, the countless images of Paris were either kept in private collections or sold to print media.

At the time, there was a sarcastic term to describe people like Paris and her epigones: famous for being famous. At the time, it conveyed the contempt in which many held her. After all, she had no obvious talent, at least not in the traditional sense: She couldn’t act, nor sing, nor glide elegantly along the catwalk. She tried these, but without conspicuous success — depending on how you define success, of course. (Actually, I’m being unfair. She wasn’t at all bad on the .) Every ignoble failure was generously publicized by a scornful media. What Paris knew and others presumably didn’t was that her talent was in her sheer presence. Just being in a store or a nightclub or appearing at a fashion show added value. Paris Hilton didn’t have talent: she was talent.

Kim must have been taking notes. She must have noticed how the damnation of the media effectively mythologized Paris. She became a genuine icon. Kim would probably argue there was no self-conscious attempt to follow in Paris’ path, but the manner of her rise was strikingly similar, right down to the videos featuring them having sex (independently, I should add, and with different partners, both men). Both Kim and Paris made their objections to having their flagrant moments widely ogled at known. But cynics might say: Without the notorious footage and the global interest — however prurient — they stirred, we might not have known much about . Or , for that matter.

Paris decoupled fame from accomplishment. She was a presence, that’s all. And audiences were mesmerized by her. They may have laughed at her gauche attempts to become a recording artist or an actor. But they never ignored her. At some point, Kim must have realized that, if people never stop goggling at you, they might behave like you. Paris had her own line of and fragrances, but she never capitalized on social media as Kim did. Kim leveraged her fame. Or, to use a term of today, she monetized it.

Like Paris, Kim’s initial medium was traditional, though the content of both their shows was contemporary. Reality TV was in its infancy when Paris and her friend, Nicole Richie, appeared in “The Simple Life,” a show that ran from 2003 to 2007. But “Keeping Up With The Kardashians” started in 2007, the year after Twitter launched, so the planets moved auspiciously (the iPhone was introduced in 2007, Instagram in 2010).

Kim was soon charging to mention products in her social media feeds. We can’t know for sure exactly how much, but, in a 2019 lawsuit, she disclosed that she often $300,000 to $500,000 for a single Instagram post (she’s worth $900 million, according to Forbes’ latest ). The close of the show won’t finish this side of her business, but questions about her future are bound to circulate.

What’s Next for Kim Kardashian West?

Kim turns 40 in October and has, in recent years, expressed interest in more serious issues, such as homelessness, gun control and the Armenian genocide (all the Kardashians are vocal about their Armenian heritage). Other family members are socially engaged, but Kim is the most prominent. Her husband, rapper Kanye West, is making his own inroads politically. But Kim has said nothing about her own political aspirations, if indeed she has any. My guess is that she does.

I also suspect Ivanka Trump, younger than Kim by a year, has her own agenda. Whether either or both make their move over the next two years, we can’t know. The prospect of Kim Kardashian (Democrat) vs. Ivanka Trump (Republican) in 2024 sounds farfetched… now. But six years ago, would anyone have seriously entertained the idea of the host of a reality show becoming president?

*[Ellis Cashmore is the author of “.”]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Kardashians Changed Everything appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The film is a subtle allusion to the new medium of television that would soon change the world. Using the window as a metaphor, Hitchcock depicts the effects of television on privacy and, most importantly, people’s curiosity about each other. Hitchcock anticipated the cultural shifts to be brought by the effects of television on American society in those times. Watching one’s neighbors through a rectangular window is not much different from watching TV on a couch. In this sense, Hitchcock anticipated the effect of the couch potato, which has now become common in the English idiom.

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But Hitchcock’s artistic foresight went further than that. He foresaw something more profound, namely the intersection between human curiosity and a new form of communication technology that was television. Today, in the age of the smartphone and social networks, this intersection is even more visible and can easily be called the curiosity economy.

Global Village

Since the heyday of television, human curiosity has driven technology further. The post-TV age made entertainment portable and put it in our pockets. There is a reason smartphone screens have been getting larger, not smaller, over the years. If television meant watching random, unknown people on a wide screen, the smartphone allows us to observe our neighbors on social media. This makes social media much more engaging and personal than television. Teens today can survive without TV, but they can barely do . A study last year that people will have to be actually paid around $1,000 to quit Facebook, even after the Cambridge Analytica scandal that exposed the internet giant’s abuse of user data.

The smartphone era is sometimes referred to as the , where tech companies treat human attention as a scarce commodity and bombard us with push notifications and updates. But our attention is fueled first and foremost by our curiosity and the desire to know what others do and say. The curiosity economy is at the heart of our “global village,” a phrase coined by the media philosopher Marshall McLuhan. Already in the 1960s, McLuhan presciently that “the global village is a world in which you don’t necessarily have harmony. You have extreme concern with everybody else’s business and much involvement in everybody else’s life.”

Reading a book used to be the most private and discreet way of accessing and interpreting information. It is not a public medium such as TV, social media, radio or even the newspaper. It is a fully private dialogue between the writer and the reader, completely desynchronized from the public. But even the book is losing this characteristic of privacy in the curiosity economy. Amazon’s e-reader Kindle shows the most-popular highlights throughout the book and recently introduced a button for Goodreads, a social media website for rating books. In the curiosity economy, it is no longer enough to interpret the content of a book for oneself — Kindle now allows you to do it “together” with other people. It gives clues as to what the public, not the individual reader, perceives as worth noting. Even listening to music is not always private. The music-streaming platform Spotify has the “social” option always on by default so friends can always see what music you are listening to. If you want to be able to listen to music in complete privacy, you have to constantly keep switching the function off.

If privacy is one of the biggest concerns of our times, then curiosity is the other side of the same coin: The former is under threat because the latter has no limits.

Who Killed the Video Star?

The shift from passive TV-viewing to the more engaging smartphone use is also seen on the political scene. If telegenic JFK was the first , then Donald Trump is the first . The TV age was mostly about presentability and image. The social media age is more about engagement and entertainment. In the TV age, one had to be physically present in a specific place at a specific time to be able to tune in to a lengthy political debate or a presidential address to the nation, which sometimes could last for hours. This made the engagement between the voter and the politician less frequent but more substantial.

The portable smartphone changes that. The curious and impatient smartphone voter expects more frequent updates from his politician compared to the TV voter. And the line between the politician and the influencer is increasingly .

President Trump is known for starting his day by tweeting and admits he uses Twitter mainly to “keep people interested.” And he is not alone in doing that. The former Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke once his visit to the dentist, suggesting that “If it is not on Instagram, it didn’t happen.” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky successfully used Instagram for his electoral campaign, and it is for him to address voters on Instagram directly from the gym.

In Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro largely avoids TV and focuses on engaging with voters on social media instead. One analyst The Economist that Bolsonaro is perceived as more sincere across social media networks because there, he is usually seen among friends and family. The former Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini used Facebook as part of the “every selfie a vote” strategy, as by The Atlantic. Even the old-guard presidential candidate, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, almost entirely his campaign on social media in order to defeat Trump, using the president’s own tactics of simplistic communication through .

In short, in the post-TV age the politician has to drop the suit and tie and behave more like your next-door neighbor. The public figure must provide the voter with a constant stream of information where the emphasis often is on quantity rather than quality.

Survival Instincts

In the Information Age, this constant stream of updates does not go to waste. It is now a valued resource we call data. Just like a river stream is converted into energy, we now use this flow of information to create intelligence — artificial intelligence. The enormous amount of information we generate is turned into a commodity that is now officially more than oil. We have become the hunter-gatherers of information, and this new gold is no longer found underground but on the servers of tech companies.

But how did we arrive at this global village? How could the value of Facebook — a website originally intended for college students to see each other’s pictures — become than the GDP of Argentina? What drove curiosity to become such an important pillar of today’s tech-based society?

One of the answers is that curiosity is deeply ingrained in our very own survival instincts. It is a human trait interlinked with prudence and the fear of the unknown. The word comes from the Latin ��ū����ō���ܲ� — a careful, diligent person, with the root word cura, or care. Since the prehistoric times, human beings were never really safe in their village or cave, so they had to explore their immediate surroundings and expand the known territory for possible threats from outside. Attack was always the best form of defense. Exploring and conquering distant lands was a form of protection from the unknown. So was conquering nature. Driven by curiosity, every scientific discovery exposed nature’s secrets and, as a result, its threats. It is telling that NASA’s rover currently exploring Mars is called Curiosity.

It seems that we are curious about each other for the sake of connection as much as protection. If, as the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre famously quipped, hell is other people, then being curious about each other also means keeping a close eye on each other. In the end, it is Stuart’s curiosity in the “Rear Window” that saves the day when he eventually discovers a murderer among his neighbors.

In “Man and Technics,” historian Oswald Spengler observes that in the animal kingdom, keeping a close eye on each other is essential for survival. Carnivores higher up the feeding chain usually have their eyes fixated at the front of their skull to be able to set their target on the moving prey, the herbivores. In turn, many herbivores often have their eyes set sideways, which allows them to spot lurking predators while they graze.

The human eye is even more complex. Scientists that humans are the only living creatures to have big white spots — the sclera — around the pupils, which allows them to spot the direction of each other’s gaze with remarkable precision. Just like animals, we rely on information accessed either by sight, smell or hearing. As the saying goes, information is power. But in addition, we have something that animals don’t have, which is speech. This makes us information predators, preying on each other in our own, particular way.

Curiosity and the need to stay informed have pushed humanity to constantly improve its communication methods by preserving and expanding speech across space and time. When speech evolved into writing, we could, via a piece of paper, put spoken words in our pocket or send a message overseas. The technology of writing made speech portable across space and durable across time. We did something similar with the smartphone: We put the stationary TV set, the typewriter and the telephone into a single device to fit in our pockets. Just like the piece paper containing speech, the smartphone encapsulates all our communication devices in portable form across space and easily accessible at all times. Thus, the ancient idea of expanding our communication capability across space and time remained the same.

But the question that arises more and more often these days is whether we now have too much information. If information is our new oil, then the simple rule of economics says that the increase in quantity always means a decrease in value. However, it is not the tech industry that experiences the decrease since the more input the AI machine has, the better. It is rather in the socio-political sphere where the depreciation is more visible. The desire for information for information’s sake risks turning politics into entertainment. One cannot have the cake and eat it too. “He knows a lot about them by now,” the narrator of “Rear Window” sums up Stewart’s curiosity. “Too much perhaps.”

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Welcome to the Curiosity Economy appeared first on 51�Թ�.

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Weiss recently had the privilege of being invited to the Joe Rogan podcast where, on one occasion last year, she allowed him to allow her to make a. To express her gratitude for that honor, she not only dedicates a to the latest news about Rogan, but she also calls him “a friend of mine.“ The news she refers to is the $100-million deal Rogan got to move his podcast to Spotify.

Weiss got her “friend” on the phone to talk about his new deal. Explaining the uniqueness of his approach, Rogan tells Weiss: “Right or wrong, in podcasting you’re getting that very pure, individual perspective. On my show, it’s my opinion and the guest’s opinion. That’s it. On network, it’s a focus-group collective idea of what people are going to like or not like. You don’t get anything wild. You don’t get anything that will get you fired.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Pure:

When applied to human discourse, unadulterated by contrary ideas or invasive distractions, such as reality

Contextual Note

Rogan is right. His offering corresponds to the ongoing exacerbation of the longstanding trend toward extreme individualism at the core of US culture. In a nation founded by Puritans, the idea of the purity of an individual’s identity remains a quasi-theological ideal. Weiss might have explored this fascinating dimension of Rogan’s success, but as a Times op-ed writer, her job is to focus on conveying her own feelings and expressing a few random insider thoughts.

Given her own experience of being made a fool of, one of her remarks sounds almost comical: “When you are sucked into a conversation with Rogan, it can go sideways, fast.” At one point in her awkward conversation with Rogan last year, she called then-Democratic presidential primary candidate Tulsi Gabbard “Assad’s toadie,” referring to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. When Rogan asked her what she meant by “toadie,” she replied, “I think that I used that word correctly.” When Rogan asked her to explain, she blurted out, “that’s proven” but then shifted to “that’s known.” In other words, it’s hearsay.

Rogan then asked Weiss what Gabbard said “that qualifies her” to be called a “toadie.” Weiss replied, “I don’t remember the details,” avoiding admitting that there were none. Then, Weiss threw out the kind of unfounded pronouncements that qualify her to be a Times opinion writer when she called Gabbard “the motherlode of bad ideas.” When challenged again, she protested, “I’m pretty positive about that.” Some might object that there are no degrees of positiveness.

Suddenly unsure of herself, she backtracked and said, “maybe I’m wrong,” but then doubled back with “I don’t think I’m wrong.” A bit later, she asked, “Am I crazy?” and then returned to claiming to be “almost positive.” Totally at sea, Weiss finally proposed a kind of truce: “I can come back on when I know more about this.” Better than anything else, this reveals how she approaches her writing for The Times as well. Weiss simply needs to feel “pretty positive” about the personal opinion she wants readers to adopt and then launch it assertively, hoping others will follow without asking the embarrassing questions Rogan did.

Weiss has her admirers. In 2019, Evgenia Peretz wrote a of the columnist for Vanity Fair in which she explained the “almost positive” side of Weiss’ propension to make irresponsible statements and then retreat. Peretz reveals that “she’s been known to do something amazing—change her mind.” Traditional journalism considered it a virtue to research a subject before having to retract any unfounded assertions. That doesn’t apply to op-eds, of course.

Weiss’ column on Rogan avoids examining the truly interesting question that Rogan himself raises about the surreal commercial logic that now dominates news and entertainment media. Rogan’s success demonstrates the failure in US media to distinguish between the two, a serious theme Weiss could have explored. She might also have followed up on Rogan’s own suspicion that there may be something perverse about his success story. Commenting on the amount of money, he said: “It feels gross. Especially right now, when people can’t work.”

Instead of exploring the uncomfortable relationship between news, opinion, entertainment and money or the deeper sociological question of the trend that keeps pushing US individualism further and further toward the celebration of solipsism, Weiss focuses on her own feelings, reactions and trendy observations. That’s what New York Times op-ed columnists are expected to do. She draws on her own experience of Rogan: “As a guest, no show is more intimidating. But as a listener, it’s why I tune in.”

She appears to admit that podcasting is threatening the livelihood of her employer, The New York Times: “That unpredictability, that willingness to take risks with topics, tone and guests, is one of the reasons podcasting is eating our lunch.” How can The Times compete with the “pure, individual perspectives” of Rogan’s guests and of Rogan himself? Individualism trumps collective effort. That’s the new American reality. It’s all about individuals who dare to blurt out what they think. Social reality beyond that simply has no authority, no weight, no reason to exist. It can’t compete and, of course, there’s no reason to ask why that may be the case. That’s just the way it is.

Historical Note

Bari Weiss accurately identifies one of the reasons why the media she represents is failing in its competition with podcasts. “T��� prestige press has become too delicate, worried about backlash on Twitter and thus shying away from an ever-increasing number of perceived third rails,” she writes. This was the case even before Twitter and has been for at least the past 70 years. But it was less due to the fear of backlash than to the media’s active role in instilling the values of the corporations that fund it and defending their interests.

Various have been trying to explain Joe Rogan’s new $100-million price tag. They speak about the evolution of the media over the past decades. And they all seem fascinated, if not troubled by the fact that Rogan has secured a $100-million contract just for talking to people. There may even be a note of envy, similar to what people feel about Warren Buffett. If Rogan can get that kind of money just by talking to people, why can’t I? And if Buffett can be a multibillionaire just by choosing stocks, why can’t I?

Rogan’s market value reflects and confirms two great historical trends in US culture: an ever-increasing focus on individualism and the fascination with celebrity. Rogan claims to reveal the “pure” individual, the one who, in his presence, can speak freely and revealing their authentic worth. Americans want more than ever to believe in the myth of the talented individual who rises above society and breaks free from it.

Then there is the “American dream.” It has always been about achieving success. It used to aim at achieving economic independence, founding a family, buying a house and being respected in the community. Celebrity culture has transformed that aspiration. Success is never enough unless it reaches celebrity status.

Most people nevertheless realize they will never become famous, so they seek some form of intimacy or at least familiarity with those who are famous. Rogan’s conversations leave listeners with the impression that they are spending casual time with a person they admire. They listen for hours, not in a quest for the celebrity’s ideas or insights, but simply because that famous person for once sounds as ordinary as they are. That realization is reassuring to those who know they will never attain the celebrities’ fame or fortune. And that’s certainly worth $100 million.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Let me start by saying that it took me years to realize how empowering it is to be a woman. In my childhood, I was a tomboy. I didn’t get along with other girls and wanted to be a boy — straightforward, reserved and noble. In my early teens, I was resentful of the “pleasing” rules that I allegedly had to follow in order to succeed — and by “success” they meant social acceptance. As a young woman, I was told that I was too expressive, too emotional, too free, too clumsy, too sexual. The list goes on.

The gender expectations bestowed on me didn’t match my personality, and I suffered. As a woman, albeit with a fat smudge of male energy, my instinct was to connect and to find common ground. It is that instinct that compelled me to comply with behaviors and choices that weren’t intrinsically good for me, and the result of such compliance was never pleasant. But when I didn’t comply — my first choice — I found myself alone, and that wasn’t pleasant, either.

The Me Too Movement: Changing the Rules of the Game

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Early in life, I complied a lot. Then rebelled, and found myself alone. Then complied again. Later on, I realized that womanhood comes with strength and complexity, and that, unfortunately, we live in a world where broken men battle differently broken women, and no one is winning.

How did we get here? Perhaps this story of the — although it is specific to their history and culture — can shed some light on the world at large. Perhaps, a version of this tragedy has taken place in other cultures, too, and so we ended up with a world where broken men battle differently broken women, and no one wins.    

A Broken Battle

When #MeToo exploded, I felt very emotional. As I was reading stories by other women, I thought, predictably, “Wow, me too!” I took a tally of all the times when I was unexpectedly groped or physically violated, of walking home from the bus stop keys in hand and a scream ready to come out, of giggling uncomfortably in the face of insultingly lewd remarks by ugly old men with ugly old breath, and I thought, Wow. All of that has really happened — to me — but somehow, I have never thought of it as “not normal.” Wow. Me, too!

I grew up in a that is verbally direct and rough around the edges and, as a result, I am thick-skinned. I don’t get triggered by minor annoyances like clumsy catcalling or mansplaining in a professional environment. I either ignore or push back as needed, begrudgingly humiliating the offending party. But physical violence is something you cannot just deflect with emotional strength or intellectual superiority: You have to fight back with your fists, and I don’t know how. The lack of physical safety that many women routinely deal with on a daily basis was an astounding #MeToo revelation for me —  I’ve never thought of it this way prior to the campaign.

Violence and threats standing on their own as something categorically ugly and terrifying, there is also something else that is more granular and existentially complex, a type of human interaction that I have thought about a lot as I was trying to understand my life and why I have lived it so far the way I did. It is as if there were two very differently damaged sides to one messy story of the social imbalance. I am going to use examples from my own life to navigate this maze because that is what I know the best.

As a musician, I’ve spent a lot of time “networking” in the music industry. As I look back, almost every time I did something that makes me cringe today, like laughing off an older industry man asking for nudes. I felt like the other party had more power than I did, and I was afraid to lose something by explicitly telling them that they were out of line. Was it true? Was I going to lose anything? I don’t know.

I have never sent nudes to anybody and never slept with anybody for professional “help,” but I have never laughed them out of the room, either — once I was on my own in a foreign country, that is. I have never told them what I was actually thinking, like that they should check the mirror and not embarrass themselves. I treated them not as equal human beings with whom I could argue if I felt like it, but as figures of power whom I should keep on my good side just in case — no matter how unpleasant their behavior was to me.

As long as they didn’t try to physically assault me, I was willing to accept the verbal dance that on the inside I found disgusting. On some subtle level, I was supporting the very imbalance I despised, even though I tried to protect myself to the best of my ability within a framework of an existing power imbalance. I was alone in a foreign land and wanted to succeed, and the men who had the power were immature and presumptuous.

So, power. Let’s talk about it.

Let’s say I had somebody behind me, somebody with money and authority — a family member, a partner, or somebody who would otherwise have my back. Or maybe I were rich and could hire the influential music industry bastards to do whatever I wanted, no favors or special friendship needed. In that scenario, would I have had the confidence to put them back in their place immediately, without emitting even half a shy giggle? You bet I would have. I would have felt secure and protected.

The chance is, they would have treated me differently in the first place if I had social power matching or exceeding theirs. But there is a great positive in all that. Having dealt with it at a younger age, I can deal with about anybody now: rich, powerful, famous, whatever. That is a superpower.

Cognitive Dissonance

And then there is R. Kelly. When it comes to R. Kelly, I have been struggling with a cognitive dissonance for years. Like all of us, I’ve heard rumors for years. But my own story with him is different. I’ve dated Rob in 2007, and absolutely nothing horrible has happened.

I have been unable to reconcile the two narratives, and for a long time, I chose to believe my own experience. But when I watched “” last year, my hair stood up. I realized that I have lucked out big time. Were there underage girls scattered around Rob’s house as I was spending time with him on my terms? The thought of it breaks my heart into a thousand little pieces.

I was introduced to him by a producer friend. Rob showed a lot of personality, and I wanted to understand what was inside his head. I was not underaged when I met him. I was also an immigrant and had no idea who he was until maybe a year before I met him. He wasn’t my boss or my role model in any way. I went for it out of my own intellectual and sexual curiosity. He stood out, and I wanted to figure him out. I didn’t want anything from him. I didn’t think he would help me with my music, and I didn’t even try. He had no leverage over me, and I didn’t give up any of my turf.

Any time I didn’t approve of his behavior toward me, like when I had to wait forever at his mansion’s security checkpoint after driving for God knows how long from Chicago to Olympia Fields, I voiced my grudges like I would do with any other man. One time, one of his assistants hushed and made eyes at me as in, “Don’t talk this way to him,” and I was like, “What do you mean?”

The entire thing lasted only a few weeks. Quickly, I became annoyed by Rob’s erratic ways and by the perpetual presence of a million doting women orbiting around him at all times, and I stopped seeing him for good. The end. And that is why watching “Surviving R. Kelly” last year left me in pieces. The contrast between my own lackluster experience and the experiences of the women in the documentary is shattering. I myself am a survivor of severe domestic violence. I know what it’s like to be treated like an outcast with no rights, and how alone and defenseless one feels when in the middle of it.

As I think about this, a million questions race through my head. I ask myself, What would the world be like if we, women — the people who have tremendous power on the inside — didn’t feel like we would lose something if we don’t accept the terms that we don’t internally approve of? What if our internal compass were set to “dignity” as opposed to “pleasing somebody in power,” even in the most challenging circumstances? What if the society respected the human spirit — male, female, or any other kind? What if no one had to feel alone and without protection? What would it be like if somebody told every little girl that she is her own boss and that she can say no at any time, and if parents taught little boys to show their strength by being protective of girls and not abusive toward them?

I got to know Rob not as a predator, but as a musical genius and a strangely shy man who brags a lot. But the stories of his survivors are agonizing to me, too, and not just because they are so powerful they could make a stone cry. I suddenly feel like I have won the lottery simply by saying no to what I didn’t want to do. My heart goes out to all my sisters who have found in themselves the strength and the courage to come out and speak up. Me, too.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Over the decades, Brazil has built a very positive international image. It was seen by a large portion of the world as a happy, multicultural, multiracial country fond of parties, high-spirited and exuberant in nature. This may not be true, but it doesn’t matter because in business, image sometimes counts more than reality itself.

Image is power — soft power. The term was created by the American political scientist Joseph Nye in the 1980s to designate the ability to attract rather than coerce (through hard power), to shape the preferences of others through appeal and attraction, through culture, sport, idiom, political values, religion, science, etc. Hollywood, the biggest cultural soft power in the world, was able to destabilize closed regimes, like that of the Soviet Union toward its collapse, through its films.

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Efficient soft power brings profits, tourism and social and technological gains to societies. Renaissance art not only softened the image of the Catholic Church but also shaped Italy — which didn’t even exist as a unified country at that time — as one of the greatest international tourist destinations of the world.

The popularity of the English language brought many benefits to countries like the United States and the United Kingdom, facilitating, for example, the international sales of cultural products like films and TV shows. Ballet is a common “business card” for Russian diplomats, seducing the world with art instead of sanctions and guns. The Japanese MAG (manga, anime and games) culture is voraciously consumed even by historic archenemies such as China and South Korea. 

Soft Power vs. Hard Power

Although Brazil doesn’t have a universally spoken language or great technology to serve its cause, it accumulated massive reserves of cultural soft power over the last decades. And this doesn’t even include the obvious — football, whose soft power withered somewhat after its humiliating 7:1 loss against Germany in the 2014 World Cup. But all this great cultural soft power is currently being dilacerated by the hard power installed in Brasilia last year, in the shape of the country’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro.

Carnival is one of the most efficient forms of soft power, one that helped build an image of a friendly and tolerant Brazil. It attracts millions of tourists from all over the world, and footage of its parades is sold to hundreds of TV channels worldwide. This year, President Bolsonaro decided to talk about the event on . But instead of using it in Brazil’s favor, he posted a video of a man stripping naked and making obscene gestures during a street party in Sao Paulo.

His tweet drew international attention and contributed to weakening Brazil’s soft power. Instead of reinforcing an image of a happy celebration, Bolsonaro created a pornographic and chaotic image of carnival in just one tweet. An isolated and unfortunate case took on an international dimension when the country’s president singled out this angle for comment.

The president again made international headlines when he that Brazil should not become a “paradise for the gay world.” At a meeting with journalists last year, Bolsonaro said that “whoever wants to come here to have sex with a woman, feel free. … Brazil cannot be a country in the gay world, with gay tourism. We have families.” For a president who wants to make Brazilian economy grow, this is not only homophobic, but ill-considered. Sao Paulo is the home of the biggest LGBT parade in the world, inspiring shows like Netflix’s “Sense 8.” This year, the parade attracted over , with hotels fully booked for days. While some developed countries fight to attract more tourists, Brazil closes its doors to one of its most profitable and democratic events.

Then, late last month, Brazil’s Ministry of Citizenship not only an abrupt reduction of investment in cultural events and products like theater plays, musicals, films and TV shows, but also started an ideological campaign against all cultural manifestations that undermine “traditional family values.” But culture only becomes soft power when it’s free to manifest ideas creatively. Hollywood became a soft power giant because no American president tried to boycott its products internationally, even when the studios produced films that went directly against the interests of Washington, like the Vietnam War films of Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick and Oliver Stone.

The witch-hunt also affected Apex, the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency that works to promote Brazilian products and services worldwide. The dismissal of its president, Mario Vilalva, following a with Brazil’s foreign minister, is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to far-right ideological control that the Bolsonaro government wants to exercise over an agency that, in order to be efficient, needs freedom, rationality and business flair to sell Brazil’s products abroad.

Everything’s Not Lost

But not everything is lost — yet. Brazil still has two other great cultural icons that, for now, are immune from hard-power attacks. Bossa Nova is still widely listened to, bought and used in films, soap operas and shows in places as distant from Brazil as the US, Japan and Australia. For now, no Bossa Nova artist is being undermined by the government, although Bolsonaro is not a big fan of Brazilian singer and composer Chico Buarque, a close friend of former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Another source of Brazilian soft power is its soap operas. Just like the carnival, they helped shape Brazil’s image as a friendly, welcoming place. TV Globo — the channel of the largest media group in Latin America — has been exporting its soap operas to over 100 countries since the 1980s, becoming an important cultural symbol. “Escrava Isaura” (“Isaura the Slave”) was to 80 countries, watched by some 1 billion viewers in China alone.

A street market in Angola’s capital Luanda was named Roque Santeiro in 1991 because of the success of the eponymous soap opera. Paladar, the restaurant owned by Raquel (Regina Duarte) in the soap “Vale Tudo,” gave its name to many of the newly authorized private restaurants during Cuba’s economic opening in the 1990s. There are even reports that the screenings of “Sinhá Moça” during the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Nicaragua. This is soft power at its best.

However, TV Globo seems to be more and more in opposition to the Bolsonaro administration, especially because the president is giving clear preference to the second-largest broadcaster, TV Record, owned by , the billionaire founder of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, whose religious and ideological views are openly aligned with the president’s. TV Record is also famous for producing religion-themed soap operas like “A Terra Prometida”(“T��� Promised Land”) and “Jezebel,” which are far less creative and inferior in terms of production and narrative.

Who knows, Jair Bolsonaro might use his hard power to give his favorite TV station a push to become a soft power to rival the leading channel he never gives interviews to. But that’s now how soft power works in arts and entertainment: Creativity must walk hand in hand with freedom. And Brazil’s new president is not a big fan of the last one.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Homer uses over and over again, such as “clever Odysseus” or “wise Nestor” for easy memorization. Trump is a master of repetitive catchphrases and nicknames like “crooked Hilary” or “sleepy Joe” for easy “hashtagization.”

Did You Say High Culture Was Dead?

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Even though Homer lived in times when information was transmitted only in oral form, Trump managed to become president with as little recourse to the written word as possible. More precisely, Twitter’s 240 characters were enough. But is the issue bigger than Trump and Twitter as far as mass communication is concerned today? Is the Twitter age, in fact, a post-written age? To understand the character of the written word as well as its implications, a little history could be helpful.

The Written Age

Canadian media scholar Marshall McLuhan and his colleagues from the Toronto School of Communication traced the transition from the “acoustic age” of Homer to the “written age” of Plato, who banned oral poets Homer and Hesiod from his “Republic.” Plato was concerned that information transmitted orally limits the acquisition of new knowledge, since for hundreds of years the pre-literate Greeks could only recite by heart the same oral epics instead of moving on to acquiring new information.

By writing down the oral Socratic dialogues and praising the eye that “radiates with intelligence,” Plato set forth a new era in the history of communication. Literacy replaced tribal memorization with private analysis and scrutiny, which would eventually become the bedrock of Western liberal democracy and way of thought. The acoustic age of the ear gave way to the written age, dominated by the eye. As McLuhan says in “T��� Gutenberg Galaxy,” the eye detribalized the Greek because he could now have a private “point of view” on what he merely heard from the minstrel.

A few centuries after Gutenberg, Nietzsche would say that “T��� German does not read aloud, does not read for the ear, but merely with his eyes: he has put his ears away in the drawer.” A few years ago, Google illustrated McLuhan’s understanding of the different epochs in the history of communication with this .

But the 20^th century brought back the ear from the drawer with radio, television and the internet. The electronic age allowed mass communication to take on an acoustic form once again. As with any technology, the aim is always facilitation, speed and ease of use and, as far as communication is concerned, there is nothing easier than the spoken word. For example, Siri and Alexa were designed for that very reason.

Paradoxically, the faster and more efficient mass communication becomes in the digital age, the closer it gets to the acoustic age of Homer. “We are marching backwards into the future,” McLuhan warned several decades before the internet. Or, as Harold Innis writes in “T��� Bias of Communication,” “Improvements in communication … make for increased difficulties of understanding.”

Today, the written word loses its dominance, and books are just not the dominant media of communication anymore, neither digitally nor on paper. Several show that reading is in in the West as opposed to digital and social media use. In the electronic age of fast information, the book’s status itself is reserved as a feel-good beach companion rather than the primary source of information.

The simple act of reading turns almost into an of slow reading. Books are so “slow” in the digital age that they have to be revived through and . In this new “acoustic” environment dominated by TV, podcasts, audiobooks, YouTube and Netflix, the written word has to catch up and adapt. It has to become closer to the spoken word in terms of speed and facilitation. And this brings us to Twitter, the equivalent of Siri and Alexa in the public sphere of mass communication.

Short, Inconsequential Bursts of Information

Twitter’s acoustic features are already implied in the name itself. According to its CEO Jack Dorsey, the name “a short inconsequential burst of information, chirps from birds.” Trump is the first to he uses Twitter like a spoken word: “So when somebody says something about me, I am able to go bing, bing, bing, and I take care of it … The other way, I would never get the word out.” The US president even speaks in hashtags. The #crookedHilary hashtag became so popular that he even attempted to from Twitter and turn it into an emoji.

The hashtag is a catchphrase that has to be recognizable and memorable — a trick already used in Homer’s acoustic days. Present on all social media by now, the hashtag is like the Homeric poem: One needs to keep repeating it until it has an effect. The more widely a hashtag is used, the more influential it becomes in public discourse. Very complex issues are crammed down into a simple cluster of words and “fly” across the global cyberspace like a spoken word.

Neither nor were intended by their originators in the way we know them today. A by the think tank Bruegel found that analyzing the #Brexit hashtag was more accurate for predicting the outcome of the 2016 EU referendum than what opinion polls, betting odds and political pundits projected. Once something becomes a hashtag, it morphs into a thing of its own by the power of popular use.

And this is where sophisticated democratic debate suffers. and are less in control of political debate and are rather led by hashtags themselves, just like the Greek listeners who were fully influenced by the Homeric epics. Is technology bringing us back to Homer’s acoustic age? If so, then we would perhaps study the ancient heroes to better understand our current leaders.

*[Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly named the Bruegel think tank as Brueghel. Updated 2/18/2020 at 11 a.m. GMT.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Popular, or “trivial,” culture was Karl May, a famous 19^th-century author of a large number of adventure stories, most of them taking place in the American West and the Middle East; Johannes Mario Simmel, the author of numerous bestselling novels; Heintje, a Dutch child star singer who melted every grandma’s heart; boulevard comedies from Bavaria and Hamburg; and schmaltzy Heimatfilme (homeland movies), such as the “Sissi” series with Romy Schneider.

Romance Novels Are a Weapon Against Misogyny

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This was a time when, on Saturday or Sunday evening — prime time — German public television would program an opera or a piece of classical theater or, more rarely, a Nouvelle Vague — the French New Wave — film. Appreciating high culture, however, did not only mean sitting in front of the TV set late at night, watching Truffault, Godard and Antonioni films. It also meant subjecting oneself to the torture of (largely unsuccessfully) mastering Latin and, a few years later and even more unsuccessfully, ancient Greek.

Even in German higher education, authorities pretended to go with the times, introducing English and, somewhat reluctantly, French, into the humanistic curriculum. It was quite obvious, however, that both languages were “children of a lesser god,” taught because they were useful and, perhaps, also because they were the languages of the nations that had won the war against the Nazis. On the other side of the German border, in the GDR, students had to learn Russian.

A Path Out of Ignorance

Times have changed. Even in Germany, the number of students struggling with Latin has precipitously declined over the past several decades. The reason is obvious. In today’s labor markets, utility trumps Bildung — that elusive German notion of comprehensive education in the most basic sense, a process of leading somebody out of his or her state of ignorance.

Ignorance, however, is a subjective notion. Is somebody ignorant because he or she has no clue who Benito Mussolini was? Is somebody ignorant because he or she has never heard of Frank Zappa? In reality, what constitutes Bildung is to an overwhelming extent subjective, largely determined by those who are in a position to impose their idea of meaning, those who managed to gain “cultural hegemony” — a notion famously associated with the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci.

In Europe, this has been what in Germany is known as the ��������ܲԲ�����ü��������ٳܳ� — the educated middle class, which derived its social status from Bildung rather than money. It imposed its notion of what was supposed to account for “good taste” and what constitutes the canon of high culture.

This did not mean that we would not indulge in reading Karl May and, a few years later, prefer Mario Puzzo’s “T��� Godfather,” James A. Michener’s “T��� Drifters” and Henri Charrière “Papillon” to Schiller or Berthold Brecht. But we did it with a bad conscience, as if reading “this kind” of literature — if literature it was at all — constituted a fundamental betrayal of the ideals of Bildung.

Times have changed, and radically so. Today it is blatantly obvious that popular culture has won the war over cultural hegemony — hands down. German public television rarely ever programs an opera, hardly ever a piece of theater. And nobody wants to watch any more classic New Wave movies, such as Alain Resnais’ “Last Year at Marienbad” or Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blow Up,” which come across as pretentious and, quite frankly, rather boring.

Today, audiences want to be entertained rather than intellectually stunned and disturbed, want to escape from their ordinary and, more often than not, mind-numbing, if not depressing, everyday working lives. This explains, for instance, the popularity of Hallmark movies, particularly during the holiday season where they are regularly programmed during the afternoon on French public television virtually every weekday. And it explains even more the popularity of romance novels, by now the most lucrative genre in contemporary fiction in the US, way ahead of crime fiction. In 2011, netted $1.5 billion in the US alone — roughly half of all mass-market fiction books sold.

The Guardians of Haute Culture

For the guardians of haute culture, romance novels are perhaps the most denigrated and despised part of popular culture, particularly if they originate in the United States. They represent everything that is wrong with popular culture. As an anti-popular-culture diatribe in the pages of put it, “T��� great majority of popular culture in the UK is worthless, moronic, meretricious, self-serving, anti-democratic, sclerotic garbage: it’s the enemy of thought and change: it should be ignored, marginalized, trashed.”

Life is too short, the author continues, to waste your time watching TV sit coms (or reading romance novels), “when you could be listening to Schumann, trying to get to grips with Beethoven’s Late Quartets, learning Italian so you can read Dante in the original, or wrestling with Ford Madox Ford” (English novelist best known for his “T��� Good Soldier”). Unfortunately, listening to Schumann has gone out of fashion, and who in their right mind would waste time learning a language spoken by a few million people? The fact is that even today’s most snobbish culture vulture has heard of, and might even appreciate, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Who and the Rolling Stones.

That’s the ultimate insult to good taste — the fact that even the parvenus who make up a significant part of today’s new educated middle class have come to appreciate popular culture. According to a , in 2014, almost half of American romance novel readers (most of them women) had a college degree. This suggests that even the college educated are in need of an escape, a welcome retreat from reality.

This, by the way, is not to denigrate high culture (except, perhaps, for New Wave films). Endeavour Morse, arguably one of the greatest police detectives ever created, finds ultimate solace in listening to classical music, reflecting a perfect combination of popular and elite culture. If high culture smells funny (my appropriation of Frank Zappa’s well-known reflection on jazz), it is because it was highjacked by self-styled cultural Cheka which came to dictate what was good taste and what was not.

For example, opera was high culture; operetta and musical were not. Ironically enough, originated as “a widely available form of popular entertainment consumed by people of all social classes.” Milos Forman’s “Amadeus” might be a bit exaggerated, but it probably is not that much off the mark. Mozart’s tunes were popular, as were Verdi’s. It was only when elite social groups appropriated the opera to distinguish themselves from the “unwashed masses” that opera became the paragon of high culture. From now on, “going to the opera” involved a certain dress code, a certain demeanor, a certain level of appreciation of the experience, deemed “sublime.”

Today, opera is just one among many entertainment options. It no longer serves as a badge of distinction (in the sense analyzed by Pierre Bourdieu). Today, even among the educated middle class, binge-watching Netflix no longer exposes you to the opprobrium of your peers — if only because they do the same. Reading romance novels (or listening to them on Amazon Audible) or watching Hallmark holiday movies is no longer something to be enjoyed in the privacy of your home. We have emancipated ourselves from the dictates of good taste, and our world is the better for it.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Did You Say High Culture Was Dead? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Even though the boss in question actually ended up being thrown out of ABC for embezzlement, “when your boss tells you you’re unpromotable, when you’re 23, it’s hard to dismiss that,” Iger said. “I just didn’t want to believe it, and fortunately I ended up getting another job at the company that he had no hand in.”

Over his more than 40 years in the entertainment business, Iger has proved himself to be anything but unpromotable — he rose through the ranks at ABC and then at Disney after the entertainment giant purchased the television network in the 1990s. Since taking the helm at Disney, a $236-billion empire that encompasses television, movies, theme parks and more, he has overseen lucrative acquisitions such as the Pixar animation studio, Marvel Entertainment, Lucasfilm and, last summer, a $71.3-billion to purchase 21st Century Fox.

The content and brand equity associated with those properties, along with Disney’s vault of classic films, are the cornerstone of Iger’s latest big move – the November 12 launch of Disney+, which aims to take on Netflix for the No. 1 spot among streaming services.

From Weatherman to the C-Suite

Iger started his career with aspirations of becoming a network television anchorman. He initially got a job as a TV weatherman, an experience that taught him he was better suited to working behind the camera.

On July 1, 1974, Iger took a job as a production assistant at ABC. He worked at ABC Sports for 13 years, including covering six Olympic Games. He was head of ABC’s entertainment division when the network was home to popular sitcoms like “Home Improvement” and “Roseanne,” and the TGIF programming block that included “Full House” and “Family Matters.” In 1994, he was named president and COO of the network’s parent company, Capital Cities/ABC.

“I worked my way from job to job,” he said. “I got in this position through a combination of applying myself, really working hard and never being fearful of the next opportunity that came my way, getting lucky, and having great mentors.”

Disney bought ABC in 1996 and Iger was named president of the business unit that oversaw Disney’s international operations in 1999. In 2000, he became COO of Disney, making him the No. 2 executive after then-chairman and CEO Michael Eisner.

Iger said he wasn’t sure that he would one day run Disney “until I was being told by the board I was getting the job 10 years later. It’s not something I dreamed of being, it’s not something I set my sights on early,” he noted. “I’ve always been the kind of person who did the job that was given to me, tried to apply myself and … [was then] given another opportunity. And that was the case — I never really looked beyond what might be the next opportunity until I was really close.”

It took 15 interviews before Iger was offered the CEO job at Disney. At the time, Eisner had held the job for more than 20 years — and for much of that time, he had great success, including reviving Disney’s slumping animation division with hits like “T��� Little Mermaid” and “T��� Lion King,” acquiring ABC and ESPN, and becoming something of a celebrity in his own right as host of “T��� Wonderful World of Disney” TV series.

By the early 2000s, however, Disney had fallen on tough times creatively and commercially and Eisner had lost the confidence of the company’s board, including Roy E. Disney, nephew of founder Walt Disney. During Iger’s interview process, he faced significant pressure to criticize Eisner.

“I refused to do that — I was still working for him and he had been a mentor to me,” Iger said. “Making the case for myself by comparing me to him was beneath me, disrespectful and irrelevant. … I told the board that I can’t do anything about the past, but I’m glad to talk about where I want to take the company and where the company needs to go.”

Why Streaming?

Where the company needs to go next, Iger said, is into direct-to-consumer platforms — namely streaming. According to a recent in The Hollywood Reporter, in addition to the Fox deal, Iger has invested $2.6 billion in technology for Disney+ and left $150 million in revenue on the table after ending the studio’s deal to stream its content on Netflix.

Disney+ customers can pay $7 a month to access almost 500 Disney movies and more than 7,500 classic episodes of television, The Hollywood Reporter story noted. Disney+ will also be home to original series that expand the worlds of Marvel and Star Wars, along with a live-action “Lady and the Tramp” reboot and a series spin-off of the popular “High School Musical” TV movies.

“When I got my job … I saw a world where technology has enabled storytelling to proliferate much more and there is much more consumer choice,” Iger said. “Quality and brands matter more than ever. That essentially means don’t let the economy get in the way of making something great, don’t let time get in the way of making something great. Don’t be limited by the amount of time it takes or the amount of money. Greatness is a necessity and an imperative.”

As the service was poised to launch a few weeks ago, Disney stock gained 5% as it announced fourth-quarter earnings that were in line with Wall Street’s expectations, including a 34% increase in revenue to $19.1 billion.

Disney+ faces tough competition in the streaming space from current leader Netflix, along with new entrants Apple+, HBO Max and Peacock, all of which are expected to roll out in the next year. (As part of the Fox deal, Disney became the full owner of Hulu, which was previously a joint venture between Disney, NBCUniversal and 21st Century Fox.)

Disney is projecting between 60 million and 90 million subscribers to its streaming service by 2024 — by comparison, Hulu reported 28 million  last spring and Netflix reported 60.6 million subscribers in the US and 97.7 million  earlier this month.

The acquisition of Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, National Geographic and other household names are key to the future success of Disney+, Iger told the audience at Wharton.

“Consumers have a habit of going right to brands that you know because that brand has values. It creates almost a chemical reaction inside you if I say Nike, or Apple or Mercedes Benz or Pixar or Star Wars,” Iger said. “T���re’s a comfort level because you know you’re going to be buying something that you know and trust.”

The existence of such a large library of existing content, plus those brand names, are why Disney is hoping its streaming service will be a different kind of value proposition to subscribers who are already being inundated with streaming options.

“As we see it, we’re not competing as directly because of the brand proposition of the service,” Iger noted. “That’s one reason we’re doing it, and that’s one reason we’re confident about it. From a consumer perspective, it’s a very, very different product than what you’re buying from Netflix and Amazon and what you’ll buy from Apple.”

Segmentation and the Creative Process

While many observers see Disney+ as a slam dunk for families with children or dedicated fans of Star Wars or Marvel’s Avengers, some wonder whether Disney+ will have enough content to attract other key demographics. On the earnings call, Iger said Disney+ had a successful test run in the Netherlands and that the demographics of people using the service was broader than expected.

During his talk at Wharton, Iger said the company’s acquisition strategy in recent years makes it easy to offer content for a variety of different audiences, even if it isn’t overtly branded as Disney content.

“FX is one of the networks we bought from 21st Century Fox and it’s known for edgier programming,” Iger said. “We have no problem owning that because we didn’t think the edginess put into the programming was gratuitous; we thought it had a purpose in terms of the storytelling.”

However, consumers shouldn’t expect to see FX shows like “American Horror Story” or “T��� Americans” streaming on Disney+, Iger said. “Disney+ will be Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, Disney and National Geographic,” he said. “It’s not FX, not the other Fox brands, not [Fox] Searchlight [movies]. We’ll deliver those separately to the consumer.”

During Disney’s earnings call, Iger said FX programming will have a larger presence on Hulu going forward, including current and former shows and original content created exclusively for the streaming service.

Like his predecessor, Iger is also credited with reigniting Disney’s animation division, which had once again fallen on tough times at the end Eisner’s tenure. Fixing a souring relationship with, and then acquiring, Pixar was a major part of that strategy, Iger said, but equally important was giving creative power back to directors.

“We turned what had become a producer’s medium back into a director’s medium, where the stories we’re telling typically emanate from directors’ hearts and minds,” he said. “We ask people to tell us what [resources] do you need to make it great: how much time, how much money do you need, and if we really believe in you and your idea we’re going to give you the support to execute it.”

While Iger still has to pay a lot of attention to Disney’s bottom line, he noted that no one has ever complained about a creatively and commercially successful movie or television show costing too much money or coming out later than it was expected.

And what if the endeavor is ultimately a failure? “Failure in creativity is inevitable; there are no guarantees, it doesn’t reduce to a math or a science. You can believe in the creator, believe in the idea, believe in the executive, but you don’t know 100% whether something will succeed,” he said. “You have to figure out how to process that; you don’t want to wallow in failure. You have to say this is a business and move on.”

Using His Voice

Iger said he’s careful to use a targeted approach to giving input on creative projects – as CEO, he sees his role as weighing in on the big issues, like a story’s pacing or clarity, rather than smaller details.

He takes a similar approach to deciding when and how to use the power that comes with being in his position. For example, director Martin Scorsese was recently in the news for making critical comments about the Marvel movies, telling Empire magazine that they aren’t “cinema.”

Rather than debating Scorsese publicly, Iger — a big fan of the director who counts “Raging Bull” as one of his all-time favorite movies – instead sent a note via Scorsese’s producing partner and manager, complimenting the director’s new film, “T��� Irishman,” but also noting that the team in front of and behind the camera of the Marvel movies, “are putting their heart and soul into them creatively and really believe in what they’re doing. When a guy like Martin Scorsese criticizes them, that hurts. I have no idea what his motivation was, but on their behalf, I felt I needed to say what he said was hurtful.”

Although Iger doesn’t see himself as much different than the 20-something PA who started at ABC making $150 a week, he acknowledged that “the power of my voice is much greater than it ever was and sometimes I expect it to be. It affects my interpersonal relationships with the people who work with me, creative people and even the people I interact with in my personal life. … Because of that, I’m more aware of my voice and the effect it can have on people. I’m much more careful of how I use it, when I say something, what I say or, especially, how I say it.”

Iger has also been clear that his time at Disney is nearing its end — he plans to step down as CEO in 2021.

“I have a great job – who wouldn’t want to run Disney? It’s a lot of fun and no two days are the same. I’m working in a business that touches the world and the impact we have on the world is incredible,” Iger noted. “But I think there’s a time to make a change at the top, and my time is about right. I said I’m leaving in 2021, and I’m leaving in 2021.”

*[This article was originally published by , a partner institution of 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Like much in this slyly playful spat, the line is strategically placed. Only later, perhaps in a week or so, will it register as a straight-faced joke. The world probably does not hate Rebekah, but a good portion of the world now knows who she is. In the economy of celebrity culture, the most valuable resource is not money but audience attention. Both she and Coleen now have plenty of this scarce reserve.

Coleen has been out of our purview for a while, living in gilded confinement, while her husband, former England striker Wayne Rooney, eases himself into retirement with a comfortable period playing football in Washington (and, next year, returning to the UK to play for Derby County). Coleen has made it known in advance that she intends to her television career as an all-purpose celebrity.

If you were asked to design a PR campaign to drive her back into the headlines, you simply couldn’t have improved on the scandal now known as “Wagatha Christie.”

The pun refers to Coleen’s five-month investigation into how ostensibly private information (most of it supremely insignificant) made its way to the pages of The Sun. Her betrayer appears to be Rebekah, the wife of Jamie Vardy, a Premier League and English national team footballer.

Rebekah responded in kind with a Twitter , denying sharing the intel on Coleen with reporters and expressing slight annoyance that all this “when I’m heavily pregnant.” She made the legitimate point that she doesn’t need the money that, presumably, news organizations would have been willing to pay for gossip on the Rooneys. But, as someone who — like Coleen — has been propelled to fame by association with her husband, Rebekah thrives on exposure.

International Attention

I was at the gym when I first heard of the gathering storm. BBC Radio called me and I instantly reacted: The whole affair was a “stunt,” a spectacular, staged event intended to attract attention. Within minutes, I got another call, this time from The New York Times. They wanted my comments on the same story.

This time, I wasn’t so dismissive. I thought: Coleen infers that a fellow “WAG” — wives and girlfriends of sportspersons — has leaked news about her decorating plans and sundry other fripperies and this story is making it to The NY Times, a newspaper that proudly positions itself as an antithesis of tabloids. Perhaps there was more to this than a squabble between WAGs.

“Were Shakespeare alive today, he’d write about this kind of stuff. It has all the hallmarks of love, tragedy, deception and, of course, power,” I told The Times journalist. A major hacking scandal led to the closure of the News Of The World, one of the UK’s most popular tabloids, in 2011, as well as the conviction of journalists, a huge police investigation and the Leveson inquiry examining the culture, practice and ethics of the media.

Phones rather than social media accounts were the conduits in that scandal, but the parallels are clear enough. It occurred to me that Wagatha Christie may have originated as a clever and elaborate publicity operation, but its surprising global traction may be partly due to its dominant theme: privacy.

Our concepts of privacy and public interest have changed over the past decade. The popularity of social media has implicated us (and I mean all of us, whether we use social media or not) in sharing much more information with many more people than we did at the start of the century. If in 1999 you had asked someone to imagine a world in which ordinary people divulged information about their private lives not just to trusted intimates, but literally to anybody, they would not have believed you. Today, we just do not recognize the idea of privacy as we once understood it.

The age-old division between the public and private spheres is being erased day by day. Politics and entertainment are affected. There is now a very flimsy membrane that separates the two, and my feeling is that this will continue to change, despite legal challenges from the likes of famous figures, such as the duke and duchess of Sussex, who are presently The Daily Mail.

Gender Power Balance

But the true surprise of Wagatha Christie is the unintentional disclosure of the changing gender power balance. The acronym “WAG” has spawned a whole culture described by The New York Times as “the circus atmosphere that used to surround the wives and girlfriends of the players on the English national team.” The term may have faded in recent years, but its emergence during the 2006 FIFA World Cup signified a principal position for women in celebrity culture.

Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Kim Kardashian and, of course, the rest of the Kardashians are among the most influential people in the world. With one post, any of these women can direct millions of followers’ attention to practically anything they wish, whether it be climate change, mental health or the global fight against malaria. Persuasive females populate and perhaps rule celebrity culture today.

Coleen vs. Rebekah may have the spirited pleasure of a soap opera, but under its prepared mischief, there is a barely noticeable seriousness. This scandal is about more than the two other-halves of famous athletes whose ascent to global fame is attributable solely to the accomplishments of their menfolk.

It smuggles into our heads all manner of questions that are germane to life in the 21st century.

Having said this, I, for one, am left with the discomforting feeling that I’ve been played. Maybe my first instinct was right after all.

*[Ellis Cashmore’s new book, “,” is published by Emerald.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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